So, You Wanna Get Your First Tattoo

  

Sorry to disappoint, but this doesn't really have anything to do with tattoos other than the fact that I was talking to a friend of mine who really wants a tattoo and we watched a youtube video about getting your first tattoo.  Surprisingly enough almost all the tattoo artists in the video suggested not getting tattoos, but in the mix there was one lady who said something that really inspired me. She said something to the effect of...

"Look at a picture of you when you were five. What really got you going? What made you really happy? What did you want to be? An astronaut? A pirate? Whatever. Look at that picture and try and figure out who you were then, because that kid in still in you somewhere. That kid is who you are in essence." 

Her point was to get a tattoo that would resonate with your essence. Now, I personally am not a huge fan of tattoos, I don't have any and I won't ever have any, but I can kinda see the appeal of having snapshots of your life on your surface to be seen. 

I spent too many years of my life trying to be what people thought I should be. Then I spent too many more years trying to be what made social or financial sense. I never felt right sitting in my skin all those years. My five-year-old self sitting in my soul wasn't liking what she was seeing. She had such high expectations of me. 

I was never very good at doing things that I was supposed to merely because I was supposed to do them. I'd try and fail every time. Eventually I just had to try doing something that everyone else thought was dumb or a pipe dream. 

One day I realized that living for "what made sense" didn't actually make sense. So, I wasn't going to do that anymore. 

I had a professor that asked me to come to his office hours to chat, there he asked me if I could honestly see myself doing anything else, if I could see myself in one place, living out a normal quiet life. When I told him that I couldn't, even though I'd tried, he finally said, "okay, as long as you can't see yourself doing anything else, and I mean anything else, then you should do this." 

Sometimes I have panic attacks about my future, knowing I'm stepping into a very rocky, very unstable road. But all in all I have to try. I have to do it because that five-year-old Nicole won't let me do it any other way. 

I sincerely hope you take the risk in your own life, that you let the five-year-old in you jump up, fist in the air, at how cool you'll turn out.

Just a random thought at 2:20 am. 

Love, peace and chocolate bars.