Yelling at myself

I'm finding that I'm doing it again - I am attempting to change/alter who I am depending on who's around me or the situation I am faced with.  Why?  That's an excellent question...

Tomorrow is my birthday and I have a wish for myself; it may seem a selfish wish and it may not come true since I'm writing it down for everyone to see but it's a risk I'm going to take.  My wish for myself is a year of being completely unapologetically me.  No explanations or justifications to people but granting myself the permission to be myself.  It has felt as if lately that people want to "fix me" and I don't know that I necessarily want to be fixed.  It's not that I'm against change but I would like the opportunity to be myself.

I had someone at work ask me this past week why I seem to deliberately want to stand out?  I asked them what they meant by that and they responded that I am a contradiction.  This lead to an interesting conversation about them saying they don't understand how I can say that I'm an introvert and yet dress on the "wild side."  I like to have fun with the clothes/accessories I wear but that doesn't mean that I can't have the personality of an introvert too.  When I asked if because I'm an introvert I'm only "supposed" to wear boring, earth tones they said they didn't have an answer to that and they walked away, ending the conversation.

The conversation did leave me thinking about the validity in what they asked.  I don't feel as if me being introspective should keep me from wearing bright colors, bold patterns or fun accessories.  I also don't feel as if dressing this way should automatically mean that I am an extrovert.  I know what I should do is just not let the conversation get into my head and I should just keep dressing however I want and continue to be an introvert if I want and shouldn't let anyone change that for me.  I need to be me.

I just looked back at the post I wrote this time last year and it was a wake up call - I wrote about the Mad Hatter from Alice in Wonderland.  My birthday just happens to fall on Mad Hatter's Day (the number on his hat is 10/6) and he is one that definitely dances to the beat of his own drum.  When I dance I move to the beat of my own drum but I need to learn how to have that spill over into my "regular" day-to-day life.  The Mad Hatter introduced me to the concept of muchness and I see it's appropriateness.  I shall definitely wear something tomorrow that embraces the Mad Hatter and my own muchness.

Well my dear readers, rather than continuing to question myself and beat myself up over things from this past week, I'm going to bring this to a close and look towards the possibilities of the week ahead. I'm potentially going to be working a 60 hour work week but I just need to remember to embrace my muchness in order to get through all of it.  My plan is to let my freak flag fly - will you?  =)