some big things I've learned

typing pool

It's okay to outgrow friendships.

You will fall out of touch with people and you will feel guilty about it. You'll feel the pang once you start to feel distant from someone you were once close to, spending every minute together.

But as life goes, we grow in different directions, and sometimes we become parallel lines. It's normal and natural.  With parts of life coming to an end and beginning anew, most friendships will be contingent on how willing you are to actively make an effort to maintain them.

I'm lucky enough to have a good support system in the same city, a group of friends that conveniently share a flat. Some of my closest friends live abroad – in London, Perth. Scattered around the world. Some I see maybe once a year if I'm lucky – some I meet when I hop over to the UK and we use every coffee shop chat to fill each other in, dramatising every mundane event, like the conversation never ended since the last time we met. Sometimes we cry and laugh while talking about our big and devastating life changes, breakups and the sorts, while gasping at every similarity. They're there for me even from abroad and make me feel like I'm not alone even when I can't go see them right now.

And then others feel awkward to be around now, because too much has changed, they, at their core, have changed, and some states are irreversibly different and incompatible. Some friends you find out have different values and suddenly you don't feel safe exposing your whole true self to them anymore. And you find yourself retreating to a more superficial treaty of peace and respect. All of this is alright. And not necessarily anybody's fault.

Don't feed into the bad stuff.

Life will prove your fears right. This will be more prominent than when it's trying to prove you wrong. Take everything as a lesson. Sometimes it's not the universe playing jokes on you, sometimes you're unlucky and that's all there is to it. You'll be lucky again. Onto different, onto better things. You'll forget about the better things because you fester on the things that go wrong. It's a bad ugly habit. Maybe writing down the good stuff helps. So maybe when next time you journal pages about your frustrations, remind yourself of what is right and dandy as well.

Routines make habits, habits help reach your goals.

I always put down my goals, not much as resolutions but goals that I want to achieve. Sometimes I have deadlines. But speaking on my goals never did anything – I've found that when I keep private about my goals and implement tasks for myself so I can reach those goals much more helpful and actually achievable. Goals look so huge until you break them down into little tasks you can do routinely. Baby steps, but making it big ones.

Practice sincere curiosity.

Don't be ashamed when you don't know something. Say I want to know this, I never knew this, I've never heard about this before. See the world as something to inform you, because not everything is what it seems and it is so vast of things to do and to learn. Sometimes we're too caught up in our own misery we forget that others have worlds of their own in their heads. Don't look at the world like it's a black and white thing when so many colours surround it.

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