Choices, "Destiny," and Resurrecting My 23 Year Old Self

This week I've been thinking about choices.  The choices I made in my twenties.  The choices I continue to make.  The choices I often think of making.  During all this "thinking," I realized something.  Or should I say re-realized something.  There really isn't any such thing as "destiny," per se.  Despite all the synchronized set of numbers I've been seeing lately, I still don't believe that it's one hundred percent pre-determined.  That's why there's free will.      

I believe "destiny," as some would call it, is self-created.  You make choices in life to put yourself in certain places and situations.  If you end up not liking it or run into difficulties along the way, you choose to either leave, continue fighting until you find a workable solution, or find another way to accomplish the same objective. 

For too long, I've been sitting here pondering about where I would like to take my life and what I would rather be doing.  Somehow during the past five years, I've lost my sense of self-esteem and self-value.  I've lost what my twenty-three year old self knew how to do so well.  She had a way of saying "this is what I would like to do," and she found a way to do it-regardless of the potential consequences.

Despite all the challenges that she ran into, and the things she let her future decisions be influenced by, she still has no regrets about those leaps of faith she took.  If she hadn't she wouldn't have learned anything.  She certainly wouldn't have gotten to live out a life in "paradise"-if only for a short while.

So, sick or not, I'm going to find a way to resurrect her.  She's set a deadline for jumping off drudgery island-boat or no boat.  She'll find a way to make her vision become more than a sketched out painting, because she's certainly done it before.  Life isn't about waiting for the "right" moment, the "right" opportunity, or the "right" set of circumstances. 

It's about believing that you have the ability to give yourself exactly what you deserve-the momentary happiness of becoming whatever makes you feel free.