When I was younger, like really young, just a wee lass, I would get so engrossed in whatever I was working on that when my parents would try to get my attention, ultimately I would end up hearing something like “Earth to Becca, Earth to Becca; come in Becca”. Things are not terribly different now, although (obviously) my focuses are different and my hobbies have evolved. I try not to get overly involved in any projects while my kid is awake, but after 8pm… WATCH OUT! Mostly because

1) I want to give my kid everything I have while she is awake and

2) I don’t want to pass my neuroses onto her.

So point being after 8pm, I pretty much find myself cramming as much stuff as possible into my evenings, every night that isn’t Monday or Friday nights (on those nights, you can find me playing the role of “gym rat”). I have neglected tons of things in the last decade when I was busy people pleasing.

Brief Aside (feel free to skip if feelings aren’t your thing): Remember that self reflection I was talking about earlier? Yea… I did some thinking, drew some conclusions. Realized that in a lot of relationships (friendships and otherwise), I tend to people please so as to keep people around. Not so much of a external validator, I know I am fucking awesome, but more of a “hey don’t leave me” thing because previous relationships and mental mind fucks. That fear of rejection and abandonment for who I really am is what kept me in this vicious cycle of people pleasing and also kept me from letting people in and moving past second tier level becca (there are a ton of layers… like an onion or an ogre). Eventually I couldn’t do it anymore. <shrug> So I changed stuff. Slowly at first and then a lot more rapidly…. and not everyone was on board with the changes. And that is ok. Not everyone needs to be… 

So back to the regularly scheduled post that we are working through.

So yea, after 8pm, I literally do nothing but straight hustle for like 3-5 hours depending on how long I can stay up, if I am running (read: getting up at 4am to roll with the 5am workout club) in the am, and what I have the stamina for.

My mornings are dedicated to sleep or running and like a well-oiled machine, I am on point and constantly moving. I dig it. This is how my life was meant to be — completely full <3. When I tell people my schedule they look at me aghast and often I get the response of “how do you… how can you do that… what?”

Bitch, I do that because I got goals. 

I have encountered people that support my goals, either by joining me on the journey or by saying hey boo you do you, but I will cheer you on from over here… and I have encountered people that have not supported my goals, actively put me down, clamped down on my shit and tried to snuff out my flame. I have been known to ignore a situation or controlling people until I absolutely have to take action… who hasn’t, amiright? BUT point is, I recognize this (NOW) as a weakness in my overarching game plan and am actively working on seeing these posers sooner than later (it’s hard af). And what I would love for your takeaway to be is that 

1. you should keep people in your life only if they add to it
2. you shouldn’t let anyone change your goals just because they aren’t their goals
3. you should always do you. no matter what.

Will this make you get labeled as “stubborn”, “bitch”, “snobby”, “asshole”, etc? Absolutely. People are haters who constantly want to keep the hardworking goal oriented mother fuckers down. Don’t let them. Fight. Fight for your ambitions. Fight for your goals. Fight for your right to be you. Fight.

And I want to show my kid that it is totally ok to be an independent chica who doesn’t NEED people but actually just WANTS people in her life. I am a work in progress and I like to think that I am conveying at least a little bit of this to her already.

Ok, so with all of that being said and documented… I have to add the caveat that there are plenty of times when you set goals and you end up failing. Completely and utterly.

And that is ok. Failure is NOT a bad thing. It is a chance for you, when you get knocked over, to pick yourself up with grace and a hair flip and tell life it hits like a bitch. <insert 3 snaps and a head wave here> Often times those who are most successful have several failures under their belt first. The knowledge that you get when you fail is unparalleled in # of lessons you can learn. All about perspective. In order to rise, first you gotta stumble a few times.

Sometimes I have had to fail a few times to learn the lesson that life was trying to teach me. But here’s my thing, if you don’t TRY, you won’t KNOW and that leaves you with a whole bunch of what-ifs and a helluva lot of wondering. I hate the feeling of wondering if I could have done something. It eats away at me, slowly picking me apart. I tend to take calculated risks and anticipate failures now but it took me a long time to get to this point, and even so, my overthinking only gets me so far. As it is almost guaranteed that I have thought of all the things that could go wrong but one… and that one thing inevitably goes wrong LOL. #StoryOfMyLife 

Point of all of this is to encourage you to grab life by the balls, personally, professionally, and however else you might want to and attack that shit with the determination and ambition that has been recently uncovered by this blog post… no I kid.

You need to find the determination and ambition to attack life (whatever facet) in whatever capacity you can. 

And as I learned in college… GO BIG OR GO HOME.