Is the grass always greener on the other side?

Distance makes the heart grow fonder... that's what they say. But I actually think that what distance does is make you realise how much you took for granted. I think moving away from home makes you realise this more than anything else. In our lives we have to make decisions and often these decisions will be selfish, but if we don't be selfish and make choices to benefit ourselves then we will never move and never grow. Moving abroad for me was one of the hardest decisions I have ever had to make because family and friends mean everything to me, but sometimes you have to look over the fence and see that maybe the grass can be greener on the other side. Maybe stepping over the fence alone and stepping towards a completely new adventure is all about what flying away from the nest is about. That that, is the only way we will really grow into ourselves. We need to find out if it's worth it don't we? We need to test ourselves and sometimes to do that, we need to sacrifice everything familiar and take a step into the unknown.

So... Is the grass greener on the other side? The truth is no, the other side might not always be as green and smooth cut as we thought it would be, because life isn't a simple clean cut fresh lawn, no matter where you are in the world. It takes careful planning and hard work to keep it maintained and healthy. You see... by moving away from home, you realise how precious family and friends are. You realise that happiness isn't always guaranteed, that it's not something you get handed on a plate just by making a big decision. The decision is only the first step of a long hard climb. I think moving away from family is hard, missing out on monumental birthdays or anniversaries but it just takes getting used to. At the end of the day they're family and the smiles every time you go home just get bigger each time because you appreciate every moment with them all the more. The goodbyes are still so hard but with Skype, texts and calls it is much easier to cope with. Home will always be home after all. Yes you still have days where you would do anything to be at home with them, and that's okay, carrying on on your own in those moments just makes you even stronger.

But friends? That's the tough one. Because, I'm sure like you, my whole life I grew up with friends around me. Whether I was playing out in my street with neighbors, or being at school and college I was seeing friends nearly every day of my life. Then when uni comes along, not seeing them as often begins to filter out your best friends from the people you will probably never speak to again. And that's okay, some people will just be like passing ships in the night. But best friends? You can go days, weeks, even months without talking to those best friends but you still know you can text or call them for coffee and just head for a catch up and it's always so nice to see them. And then when you move away from home, those friends become even further away, and that distance means no quick coffee dates, or bumping into them in the street. It requires fleeting meetups if you both happen to be free and in the same city. It means these messages become less frequent, and although you know they'll always still be there, its hard to be a good friend to them when you're not there.

The thing about this is I expected it to be balanced out, that I would meet so many new people and make so many new friends that I would have this great social life and then still be safe in the knowledge that I have my closest best friends at home. But when you move away, and I have spoken to others about their experiences of moving away, it seems it's a general thing that it's actually extremely hard to make friends. The fact is this... at home you have your social circle and go about your day without actively looking for more friends; because your comfortable. Home is the anchor; with everyone and everything being so familiar. You lose that by moving abroad, you have to be proactive to find others wanting to find friends and then you have the issue of trying to find someone you have a true connection with, which is much harder than I thought it would be. If you do meet people you can't leave it weeks or months to message and meet them, it requires a more persistent effort and it's hard to keep up when you're busy with other things; like the common "Life gets in the way". It requires a great deal of motivation and patience to find and make your own social circle when you move to a new place and I guess I never really expected that. I am lucky to have met some great people here, but when you look at the bigger scale of things and compare that to the expectations I had, its really quite different. It's not impossible it's just a bigger challenge, a bigger obstacle to overcome and it's just a slow process.  

And there are a lot of other obstacles to overcome, such as the language barrier; like the scary experience of emergency medical care where they don't speak your language, or when you can't understand the menu or the humiliation when you don't understand when a stranger asks you a question. And then there's adapting to new foods, new transport and place names. It's all a bit like being thrown in the deep end and it's really darn scary. But at the same time it's incredible because you get to know yourself so well. Every moment is worth it... it's one incredible adventure, and it makes you feel so alive. It's unpredictable, like going through a maze where you're trying to find your way through, but you don't know what is around the next corner. 

I think my point is, that when you move abroad you have such high expectations that this glamorous, exciting new life will bring you all the happiness in the world, and it will. It's eye opening and thrilling and every new place you discover makes it feel that little bit more like home. It's just that so much change can also bring in loneliness, homesickness, fear, weakness.. and I've learnt that that's okay. It's all part of the experience because if things aren't challenging, then we're not growing. Moving abroad has been the biggest and most rewarding challenge of my life, I wouldn't change it for the world and I still wont. Any negativity I have just encourages me to make changes and make my life away from home so good that giving it up is not an option. I think in your weakest times you see your true vulnerable self and I am not going to let her down by being defeated by obstacles I know i can overcome. There is always an answer, it's just working out what that is and not forgetting to keep looking at the bigger picture to remember how far you have come. We all know we all deserve to be happy, you just need to remember sometimes you have to hike the long walk to the top of the mountain to appreciate the view. 

THE END OF A FAIRYTALE

I think sometimes you can be scared to be happy, for fear that it will only be temporary. Good things come and go and when you get so many good things in concession with each other, surely your time of fortune is set to be up soon. That's how I feel about this summer. This summer has literally been the most incredible three months of my life. I have never ever felt so free; from responsibility, from obligations, from everything. My only obligation at the moment is to be happy. But it has to end and I have to leave. Okay, happiness can be a choice but when everything that makes you happy is soon not going to be in reach, what can you do? Because I've been given this life to live for three months, this dream and now I have to wake up and leave.
So I moved to Prague for the summer as you may or may not know. And in all of that time I have become the person I was always meant to be; my happiest self. The thing is, happiness and freedom come hand in hand together, and the key to both of those things is letting go. Sure we all have baggage, we wouldn't be who we are now without a few suitcases of troubles dragging behind us but its learning to brush off the dust, open them up and free them from you, rather than carrying them and letting the weight of them drag you down. But I learnt this summer that perspective is everything too. Looking back on things that happened in the past is all part of growing, but how you are viewing them is all that matters. To be blunt... Shit happens. The sooner you accept that the sooner you can learn to let go of it. Everything happens for a reason and if you open your mind enough, life will reward you with new hellos and new experiences that will become the life you know now.
So I am leaving Prague in only a week and a half and it's going to be one of the hardest things I will ever have to do in my life. I am settled here, I'm happy and I'm at home. The people I've met have become part of my everyday life, the freedom of having my own apartment with my best friends; the ability to travel where and whenever I can, and of course best of all... the ridiculously cheap price of beer! All of these things I am giving up to leave when it's the last thing I want to do. Why don't I just stay then some would ask? But sometimes life doesn't work in our favour and no matter how much we want something we cant always just get it. We have to work for it. So my temporary plan at the moment... come home and sort my life out. To be exact, I have the goal of living abroad again by the start of the year. I hope that by the end of January, I will be settled in either Prague or Berlin au pairing, because they are my favourite cities in the world and why not?! My family and friends mean the absolute world to me, but England doesn't. My heart belongs elsewhere now and I learnt once I started traveling that I could never feel truly at home again, because I have an adventurous heart that belongs to new experiences, and the people I have met along the way. Besides, when it comes to family and friends, distance is irrelevant when people are that important.
Okay so I might just be talking myself into believing this, but I need to see this big step of leaving as a positive thing. Not see it as everything that I love I am leaving, but rather that I just have something to work my way back to getting again. Use this as my motivation. It's going to be so hard, and it's hard to put into words. I need to appreciate what I've been lucky enough to experience, because right now I'm at my happiest. Nothing lasts forever but I am so so grateful for this opportunity that came my way. I have changed, because my mind-set has changed. I've learnt to live in the moment and it's the greatest and most freeing feeling I've ever felt. That's why I love traveling, and living in an unfamiliar place; you are completely free and you get to meet the most incredible people. It would take so long to list the amount of people I've been lucky enough to meet, like passing ships in the night who I may or may not ever speak to again. That's the price you pay for traveling. Accepting that every hello will either end in a goodbye or a see you soon. And it all just depends on which you choose. I choose not to say goodbye to Prague... But rather see you soon.  
 
 
 

Opportunity Knocks

Sometimes motivation is one of life's biggest struggles. Occasionally we'll only be able to be proactive when life slaps us around the face with something that makes us realise the capacity of the importance of change. We can become so comfortable in our little habits and routines and get so used to talking about what we need to do, yet never get around to it. We think that time is fundamentally infinite and yet time is the most fragile thing that controls our lives. Everything can change in a minuscule of a second and our biggest regrets are not always the things we've done, but the things we never did. Sometimes we need a colossal event to come around to shake us up and make us realise how short life is and that if we don't change things right now while we have the opportunity, we may never be able to do it at all. We always say we'll do it tomorrow, and then tomorrow turns into another day and another day, and eventually its weeks, months even years passed by and we're still sitting here saying we'll get around to it. But every once in a while an opportunity will come around that puts everything else on hold...

I was lucky enough to have one of these opportunities put on a plate and slid across the table to me. A close friend of mine was offering me the opportunity to move to Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic, for three months of traveling, fun and freedom. And at first I actually laughed it off and said to myself come on I couldn't do that! I guess everyone is scared of change and that's a pretty big change to consider. It was only as the next week or two played out that the seed of the idea had begun to sprout out and the thoughts I had began to surprise me. I've travelled on my own before sure, but I've never actually lived away from home before and my family are everything to me. I wouldn't see my family or my friends and I'd lose all sense of familiarity. It was that realisation that actually inspired me to start thinking yes in my mind. Sometimes we trap ourselves in our own circumstances; become a little too comfortable. I think life is a lot about stepping outside of your comfort zone to gain as many experiences as possible, which I think is why I love to travel so much. Stepping outside of normality and throwing yourself into whatever life will throw at you. And though I may not always share my travel stories and experiences they are all part of the foundations of the person I am today.

Sometimes as well you'll go through some challenges that will change your perspectives of things in your life. Sometimes realising how easy it is to lose something can make you appreciate the things you do have all the more. You can become stronger than ever when you can gain appreciation; realise that family is family, they will always be there. I am also safe in the knowledge that I have some incredible friends in my life and a test of time is simply a test on how real that friendship is. Friends and family were not the reason stopping me and when I realised that I was far nearer to saying yes than before. Then there was the matter of work, I was in a job I was very unhappy in recently and leaving couldn't have come at a better time. It was beginning to drain me of my passion for my life so this opportunity was absolutely ideal.

The thought of it scared and enthralled me. Which is why I said yes and am here writing this very post in a lil' café in Prague near our apartment. Because I think fear is the counterpart to excitement and if you don't take a risk you will never get anywhere. My life had become a mundane routine with only a splash of excitement here and there and I needed more. The people close to me knew I needed more. This opportunity is three months of excitement and I know that I need it. I plan to take these three months to explore, travel and get back to being the true wanderer that I am again. I've been here nearly a week already but I had already settled in by the time my first day had hit sunset. It amazes me now how I don't get that anxiety of being in a new and foreign place anymore when I first arrive. I'm simply comfortable but in an entirely different way than the comfort at home. Because these three months are an opportunity to challenge myself. To write, to get to know myself even more but most of all just make the most of it. Because if there's going to be one summer in my life where I'm as free and excited as this, it is going to be this one. And one of my number one rules this summer which started when I agreed to come here, was to just keep on saying yes.

 

 

2014.. The Year I Started Living

Put quite simply, 2014 was simply the best year of my life... So far.
What makes it even more amazing is that I proactively ensured that it was going to be. Through both my actions and a particular helping hand from fate, I'm in a position in my life now where if you would have told me a year ago how it would be, I would never have believed it. But that's the thing about life, you can't plan it out no matter how much you'd like to because you never know what might happen. Whether it be something catastrophic or something incredible, its the unexpected things that make life the surprise that it is. Can you imagine knowing what the next 50 years of your life will entail..? No because that wouldn't be living. I think to really live life, you have to embrace the fact that things are out of your control. Just like you can't control the weather; you can't control the actions of others or control time which has such a significance in our lives. Once you come to this realisation, life gets easier somehow, because you accept that what is meant to be will be.
I'll be honest, I've never been a particularly laid back person. Whether I put that down to the previous pressures of Education, or my family who aren't the calmest people in the world, I don't know. I used to overthink everything, for no apparent reason and then I went traveling in April and my entire life changed. Because I didn't care. I didn't pre plan how to get to my hotels from the train stations, I didn't pre plan what I wanted to do in each place I visited, nor did I do much research into anywhere I went either and you know what... I've never enjoyed life so damn much. I let my legs walk where they wanted to, I ate whatever I fancied without any consequences, I spoke to every person I had the opportunity to speak to,and as a result, met some of the most life changing people, even for simply the briefest of conversations. Because when you travel you're expanding your mind to so much more. Varied cultures, religions, tastes, people, languages, the list is endless. But the one thing you become most knowledgeable about.. is yourself.
The person writing this now is a complete transformation from the shy, lost girl I was a year ago. Because back then I didn't know myself. I didn't know who I was, and yet now I feel so comfortable to be me. I walk around with a freedom and never feel ashamed to be alone. I've said many times on my blog posts I'm solitudes' number one fan, and I'm just so used to it now. I spend a lot of time by myself, and some people probably feel sorry for me for that but I never see it as a bad thing. I actually love it for many reasons, mainly however, it helps me to appreciate when I do spend time with loved ones. When your younger and at school and college you see friends every day not thinking anything about it, and I realise now how much we take that for granted. I'm in a long distance relationship too, so naturally I  don't see him a huge amount either but I don't take any of it for granted anymore. Every moment I spend with the people close to me now, has a much more monumental meaning and I simply make the most of every opportunity together now.
However back to topic! 2014 was the best. With its incredible, life changing moments maybe even slightly outweighing the negative ones. I read a book recently and one of the main parts I remember from it was this... "Once you learn to love yourself, amazing things will suddenly start to happen to you. such wonderful things, that you will start to describe them as magic".
That's what happened to me. I went traveling, found myself, began to love myself and then fate stepped in and started a domino effect of positive things happening all in concession of each other. As soon as I got home, I was offered a job. Okay so it didn't turn out great in the long run but it was another experience to add to the list and was pretty ideal when I first started, and a mixture of other things happened too. I know now I just need to have fun. Be less serious, don't over think things and let things happen as they're meant to. I can't predict where I'll be in my life in 6 weeks time, let alone 6 months or 6 years so why worry about it?!

2014 was the best year of my life for meeting people. So many incredible people came into my life, and I'm lucky enough that a large amount of them have stuck around. I started a new job 4 months ago now, and I love it. Okay so it's another coffee shop job but it's so different from any place I've worked before. I have some amazing friends from there already and my social life and my confidence are only on the up at the moment. And when it comes to traveling, and seeing the world, I already have plans for the next 2 months. Going away for a few days to Portugal in only 2 weeks time, and then a surprise trip away where I won't find out where we're going till the day. I hate wishing time away but there really is so much to be excited for. And if I'm not excited about living life, well, it would be pretty darn boring to say the least.
So maybe 2015 won't top 2014, or maybe it will. But I'm going to try my hardest to make it a good one...

 
 
 
 

The best things in life happen when we least expect them

It's funny how quite often the best things in life happen when we least expect them. Spontaneous plans that turn out to be the best nights of your life, coincidental meetings with people who change your life a way you would never even imagine. When you lose something in your bedroom for example, you look everywhere to find it but you simply cannot see it for the life of you. Only when you stop looking do you come across it and wonder how you never found it before. There are so many moments like this in life particularly when talking about love. So many people search for love, but it rarely works that way because how can you find something when you don't even know what it is you're looking for. When you stop searching and let life do it's own thing it'll find you, however cliché that may sound. When you lose grip of the idea of this perfect guy or girl, and the idea of how romance and love should be, you'll discover your own love story unravelling around you. We're always looking forward, waiting for the next big event or next colossal moment to happen in our lives, and we forget to live in the present. If you take the step to sit back and enjoy life in the now, everything else fits in to place just how it should.


It's hit me lately just how much I believe that everything happens for a reason and that everything will always work out how its meant to. Not that I strongly believe that everything is predetermined but I think there's a fine line between fate and things happening as a result of proactivity. its the tiniest detail that is the reason we're even here today. Every little thing in the past no matter how small has led up to this very moment and when you look back at things that happened you can nearly always understand why. Why things didn't work out in that past relationship or why you didn't get that job you once wanted so badly. That's why I'm safe in the knowledge that from now on everything will happen as it should. I'm not going to sit back and do nothing letting life do it's own thing but if I don't get a job that I want or something goes wrong, I know that's just meant to be and soon enough one day ill be able to look back one day and know the reason why it never worked.

I've said before that deciding to go traveling in Europe on my own back in Easter was life changing, but it's only hit me recently how colossal the changes in my life really were. I made friends for life and got to know myself on a much deeper and more appreciated level. I also just got back from Canada last Sunday! It's all go at the minute but I never would have gone if I hadn't gone traveling because I was visiting one of my best friends I met while in Italy. The Canadian version of me you could call her, and I had such an incredible time over there and it was such a good experience. Quite often when I go away I really struggle with the thought of leaving and coming home back to the little ol' town I live in. Yet this time after my time away alone I knew that I would be fine. That it didn't matter where I was because life is about the unexpected and I didn't need that special someone to come home to. I'm not one of these people who depend solely on their relationship for happiness, I'm simply just too independent for that. Happiness, or rather fulfillment stems from the inside. Gained through self respect and love and having a high appreciation of yourself, which in my opinion you can only truly gain through solitude.

So I stopped looking for this idea of love, up and left to go traveling on my own and got to know myself and what I want so much better. I let go of that searching that was weighing me down, and when I stopped looking, life found a way to bring it to me.  I also know that if someone had told me 6 months ago how my life would be now I certainly wouldn't have believed them. So much has changed and in such a short period of time. You never know what's right around the corner, but I think that's part of the excitement in life. Can you imagine if we knew everything that was going to happen in our lives for the next few years... would be pretty boring really wouldn't it?

In love with the idea of love

We are surrounded by the idea of love. We watch films, read books, see plays, poetry and greeting cards that all put this four letter word on a pedestal. But what does it actually mean? What does it mean to be in love and how do you know when you are, or whether you are simply in love with the idea of love? It's sad but true that we create an idea of the people around us and when they defy it, it questions whether they're right for us in the first place.

We are surrounded by fairy tales and romantic comedies which share no similarities with reality; they are fiction. We know this and yet for some unbeknown reason we convince ourselves that this is what we are looking for and we won't settle for less in the hope one day that moment will come. That brief eye contact in a movie where the characters know there and then that that is the person they will spend the rest of their lives with. How? How is that even slightly possible? I think attraction and lust can be at first sight, but love means a fundamental understanding and appreciation of another person. Loving everything about them, from appearance, to their faults and imperfections that altogether make their personality. Being in love is being in awe of their every detail and accepting that for the rest of your life you will be falling in love with a different person every day because we are always changing. 'Love at first sight', is falling in love with an appearance; with the idea of someone and not the person for who they are because you haven't got to know them yet. They could turn out to be the most horrible person you've ever known and would you still be in love with them? No. I understand you can have a connection with someone straight from meeting them, but that's not love.

This may be a morbid opinion to have but it's reality. The word love is thrown around so easily nowadays and it's the one word that hurts people more than imaginable. It's not just a word it's a promise of acceptance for whatever is to come but it falls apart so easily nowadays that it has simply lost it's meaning. It's funny that when you're single you're opinion on love changes dramatically to when you're with someone. When someone is making you feel happy and free the love songs start to make sense. Sappy love poems and films have a new dimension of meaning. You surround yourself with things to do with love so much so that you build the situation up to so much more than it really is. You lose sense of reality because you encase yourself in your own fictional scenario. You become in love with the idea of love and the idea of the person you're with so much, that when life and reality get in the way and things don't work out it makes the fall down so much harder. You convince yourself that now you're in love you will never be lonely again and it's far from the truth. You've been living on such a high, watching your own life as if you're watching a film expecting the happily ever after because that's just what happens in fiction. But reality is not fiction, it never will be. You have the reality of bills to pay, arguments, cheating. You are exposed to the good side of love and never expect the bad, therefore it's much more heart breaking when the bad happens. When you build your expectations so high, reality will never compete and it will lead to an ultimate unhappiness. The worst part is you can't understand this at the time either. You blame yourself, the timing, then the person who supposedly broke your heart... but did they? Or ultimately do we simply break our own hearts by building our expectations unreasonably high that we can't handle it when the truth is revealed. Due to being exposed to this idea of perfect love we're always expecting more intentionally or not. It's drilled into our subconscious what love should be, therefore it's never as glamorous and it ultimately leads to disappointment.

Not always though. I'm more than aware that some people meet and just know and if that happens then so be it. You're one of the lucky ones because there are so many people with bitterness towards love because of the past. Who find it so difficult to trust again because of one time or many times where it's been broken. We live our lives in search of love because we think it is the answer to true happiness. Maybe for some people it is, but for me I know it isn't. I'm a believer that happiness comes from loving and accepting yourself. Only then can you appreciate the love you receive. Quite often people feel they don't deserve the love they receive and that's because they haven't yet accepted themselves for how great they really are. Most of us are in love with the idea of love. It's just understanding that there is a big difference between the idea and reality.  

The clock is always ticking

Time is the strangest concept. Who decided that as soon as it becomes dark the world has to go to sleep. Just to think the other side of the world is waking up as your head hits the pillow goodnight. It often strikes me how much importance time has in our lives. A split second can change someone's life forever. That tiny moment of the second hand of the clock moving that fraction of an inch and everything can change. To think that every second that passes we will never ever get back. We can't turn back the clock no matter how many times it's done within fiction. Every tiny action we take or word we speak in that second, has the potential to change not only our lives, but the lives of the people around us. I guess that links to the idea of fate. I can't say I definitively believe everything is predetermined, but I do believe that everything happens for a reason; even if we never find out what that reason is. It's the tiniest details that always get me when you look back on the past. You hear the stories of how couples met, and it was only by that small slither of a chance that they are together today. My parents met on an organised trip to a concert and ended up sitting next to each other on the bus. If they hadn't have sat next to each other I wouldn't be here today. It's astonishing how tiny the details of the past can be that can bring you to the point of reading this very post today. Such as near death experiences... we've all heard of cases where people have been seconds from death and manage to escape, right place right time and maybe without even knowing. No, I'm not talking about final destination, but you get my drift.

It's negative things too though. You know those pivotal moments of feeling like absolute crap because you have been dumped by your partner for example. Yet in months, maybe years, you look back with a different perspective and see why things didn't work, knowing it was for the best. And why is that? Because time is fundamentally a portal of change. We look back on things that happened in the past with a different perspective because we ourselves are different. Every day we change. Noticeably or not. One day we'll suddenly be 70 years old and wonder where the hell our life has gone because time is the most powerful and manipulative thing in our lives. It's the foundations of how we live without us even realising. We convince ourselves we have all the time in the world. We feel as though it's something that we control yet in reality it controls us. Think about it... we get up at a certain time, we should have lunch at a certain time, eat our tea and then go to sleep before it gets too late. We live by the hours that pass us because were always looking to the next event, the next thing we should be doing. We live in a world where everyone likes the idea of living in the moment, yet very few actually take that step and grasp every opportunity. We live day by day rather than second by second, counting down the days until Christmas or a birthday and gradually years turn into the equivalent of minutes. I've always thought time goes quickly but with technology and our ever growing awareness of it; it flies by even quicker. I can't count the number of times I'll come onto the computer and when I look at the time 2 or 3 hours have passed without me even realising, and it's scary. That's how I imagine to see my life one day when I'm older, I'm scared that one day I'll ask myself where the hell did it go?!

That's the motivation that keeps me from making a decision about life. Figuring out an answer to the famous... "What would you like to do with your life?". They mean career wise but I can never find an answer for that question other than just enjoy it. I don't want to look back one day and regret not doing more with my life, which you hear happening so often. So I decided when I arranged my travels that I am going to live. From that moment and from every moment since I've been home, I have the motivation to just make the most of life. My travels changed me and, as you may agree it's hard coming home after being away anyway, so 5 weeks away definitely had an effect on me. On my travels I didn't become a new person. I just became the person I was meant to be, who was hiding under who I was being, but not living. I have become really deep, as you may be able to tell, and changing so much then returning to somewhere that hasn't changed a bit has been difficult. I can only compare it to trying to fit a jigsaw puzzle piece into the empty space that looks right but it just won't fit. And coming back to reality is hard when you've had the best 5 weeks of your life but I'm staying positive. I've already planned a trip to Canada to visit the most amazing best friend I met while traveling, and I find that keeping my mind on my plans of future trips is keeping me from the dreaded future of trying to figure out a career path. When I say to people I'm planning to get a temporary job, save up to go traveling, then return and do the same again, they say it's ridiculous and you can't do that for the rest of your life. It's not my life long plan but its for sure a momentary one for the here and now, and all I want to know is who says I can't?! Just because I'm not taking the conventional path and going to university then finding a dead end job I'll be stuck in for life, its a big thing trying to do something individually while everyone around me is doing the same thing but I'm doing what makes me happy. Happiness is of fundamental importance when it comes to enjoying life. If doing this, even temporarily is making me happy, I'm not planning to sacrifice that for the expectations of society and other people, anytime soon.