23 FEELS NICE, CALM DOWN

Dear Dreamers,
    I hope you are all well! Today was my 23rd Birthday and it was absolutely terrifying! Everyone kept telling me that "it's all down hill from here" and sadly Taylor Swift did not entitle her song 23. And for at least 30 minutes I had myself convinced that my sad little life was totally over! I mean, a 23 year old is so old and irrelevant, right? I cried for precisely one minute because I thought that was the truth! Then I came to my senses!

   If I actually consider it, my 23rd year of life is the start of a new chapter in my life. I can now look back and say, "I've finished my education, I no longer live for free, I pay taxes!!" So in many ways, my adult life has just begun! And even though it is hard to leave 22 and my childhood behind, I am ready and quite excited for this phase! So, I am going to try and come to terms with this revelation and quite freaking out! I think it may be time to use my nervous energy for something more productive.. like my career ( SHI..! ) So I still don't have a career.. but I'm working on it!

  Now, onto something quite important. It is entirely possible to be "HAPPY, FREE, CONFUSED, and LONELY at the same time" while be being 23 or 24 or 25 or.. you get the point! The truth is that I am still all of these things! I am happy because I've come a long way and accomplished a LOT in 23 years of life. I'm happy to start the next phase of life! I am still allowed to be a free spirit! I am also free to flirt because I'm single! I'm free because I am not tied down to any specific person or thing. I am free to be myself! I am confused, so confused. I don't know where life will take me or what exactly I want to do! I am confused because I don't want to work in the field in which I have a degree to work in! I am confused because I bought into the lie that I am only qualified to do the job which is indicated on a piece of paper! ((AND SOOO HAPPY THAT THIS IS NOT ACTUALLY THE CASE)) I am confused because I am still trying to figure my life out! I am lonely because I don't have very many close friends. BUT, I am in the process of changing these small problems!

  My advice to the 23 year olds out there is to start honing in on your decision making skills! We have a lot of life altering decisions to make at this phase, and it's important that we make each one with wisdom, grace, and happy hearts.

  So to conclude, whether your 23 and in the same boat or any age, we are all going through these hard times and I hope I can be of some use to you! I spend a lot of time pepping myself up, so I figure I should try to pep you up too! If you've been here before, maybe you have some valuable advice to give! I would love to hear it if you do! I feel like if we all have to go through this, we may as well do it together and learn from each other! This day has inspired me to take a different approach to blogging. It's time to get a bit more real. Your twenties can be rough, terrifying and strange! I'm here to remind you(and myself) that it'll be okay! I'll talk to you soon! xo, Brooke

TWIN-FERENCES

Dear Dreamers,
 Is it just me or is life just too crazy all the time? I don't know about you, but I feel crazy all the time! Therefore, my life is crazy? Yeah, that makes sense.. Then just when the craziness has gotten to you in a bad way, you come across something that causes you to smile! Tonight was my night for smiling. I had a great time with my family at a fundraising banquet followed by a nice venting session with one of my best friends. In talking to her, I learned that my twinnigins had posted a new blog! I felt instantly jealous of my friend because she had read it before me.
     Let me preface this by saying that I think so highly of my twin sister. In my mind, she is perfection! She is the wisest woman I know, she is ever so intellectual and such a beautiful picture of Christ! She is well read, a bit nerdy, gorgeous, and owns up to who she is! She also serves as my fashion consultant, stylist and personal life coach/cheerleader. Needless to say, I couldn't do life without her! I just LOVE her beyond anything!  So being that jealousy had set in, I quickly safaried her blog and realized I hadn't just missed ONE post, I had missed THREE!! CUE INSANE JEALOUSY! So, I read the most recent one and then decided to wash my face and get ready for bed before committing.  As this action was obviously going to lead to a night spent internetting. After putting on my pajamas, I looked up at my bed and felt upset by what I saw. What did I see? Oh, just the usual. A huge pile of crap consuming 3/4 of my bed and a long, narrow dent where I have been sleeping for about two full weeks now! Then I did something that is  out of my character. I told myself to clean it off and actually did it! For the sake of you finishing out the rest of this blog, I won't take the bunny trail I have presented here. Instead, I will just say that sleeping on a clean comfy bed is totally necessary to one's sanity! After I cleaned off my bed, I took my giant perfume bottle and misted my favorite scent all over my bed! Why? Because I wanted to take the extra step to feel like a princess in my bed!  moving forward---->
    When I returned to my bed, I happily settled into the dead center, got comfy and set up to read the other two posts. In reading them, I realized that she was up to her usual silly self. I was laughing after the first sentence. After reading her take on Spring, I read a post she wrote about her personality type! She is an INTJ don't ya know!? This instantly got me thinking and subsequently laughing. I am an ESFP and now you realize that I am laughing because we are total opposites. Being total opposites makes our life quite funny. We just don't think the same way at all! Take for instance the fore mentioned instance with my bed and the perfume.
   See, in my mind spritzing my bed with my favorite perfume made me feel luxurious and happy! It makes me feel important that my sheets smell good. It makes me feel ritzy in the midst of the tornado that is my room and as an added bonus I'll smell good all the time!! Now let's pretend she was in this exact situation. You see the problem don't you? She wouldn't be in this situation because she is much neater than I am and knows that a clean bed means easy sleep! Also, she would never spritz her bed with perfume because it would cause her to have a headache and therefore, not get any rest! There my friends, is my point. The two of us are different. She is simple, level-headed, and brilliant. I am a wanna be uptown girl who is slightly ditzy and ridiculous. We look the same and are totally different and I wouldn't change that for the world because she and I have all the fun! And if I changed her, we wouldn't be able to send each other creepy homemade FAN GIRL MEMES all the time! She is DA BOMBLES! 'nuff said. THE END! Sorry that you have no clue what I'm talking about and that this post has no clear/obvious point/climax. I just needed to say all this anyways.  OKAY BYE!!

        
 

The Magic of a Smile

     You know when you've just had an amazing day, the kind of day when everything is going right and  absolutely nothing could really bring you down? Well take that, multiply it by seven and that is the week I've had! Currently I am on cloud 9 and loving it! So I bet you're wondering how I got there, right? Well I have good news! It wasn't some random series of events that brought me here. It wasn't luck or anything else. It was simply my mindset! But Brooke, we already know this. Happiness is a choice, blah blah blah. Yes, I am aware that you're aware, that I'm preaching to the choir.. but I feel passionate about this matter so just listen... please?! ;)
 
   Keeping with the traditions of modern day society, when 2013 rolled around I clinked champagne flutes with my closest friends, took a sip and watched the couples in the room kiss. After the festivities I went home, got in bed and began penning my thoughts in a brand new journal. My personal  New Year's tradition is to start a new journal, one I'll fill with all my most significant (and more often than not insignificant) thoughts/stories over the year! And just like always, I greeted my new journal by writing: January 1, 2013 - Happy New Year!  It's 2013 Baby! I went on to ramble about my lovely evening. Apparently I liked the people I met at my friends party and afterwards I went to Waffle House with my twin sister where we received kisses (on the cheek) from some 18 year old twin boys! It was obviously a night to remember. But after regaling my inanimate best friend with the craziness, I decided to get serious. So I wrote out my thoughts about my life and concluded with this resolution-esque statement.. which is less a resolution and more an inspirational promise to myself.

       "Right now I am feeling inspired to have a happy, fresh, and single 2013! I'm going to try living and feeling the moment more often. I'm going to dream big then make my dreams my reality. I'm going to live, love, and laugh a lot more! I'm going to journal a lot like normal to keep my sanity and I'm deciding now that I will be happy. Im am going to enjoy being young and free. I will seek out inspiration and aim to be an inspiration to others. This year my motto will be the quote on the cover of this pretty blue journal.. "She's a dreamer, a doer, a thinker. She sees possibility everywhere." So fingers crossed and a kiss from me to ring in the new year of dreaming, doing, and finding possibility in everything and every place. xoxo. "

   If I'm honest, this little profession to myself does not read as well as I thought it did that night. That's probably because it was 5 AM.. and I'd yet to sleep! However, did you catch that little part in there about being happy?  I'm deciding now that I will be happy 
   Yeah, that was the moment I decided to make the conscious decision to be happy every day for this entire year. The moment I let that oft-quoted advice resinate. I can and will be happy because.. why shouldn't I be? Why should I waste my short life being miserable? Exactly, I shouldn't and neither should you! That being said, I have to add that it seemed to be an appropriate choice as it fell in line with my other goals for the year, i.e. I'm going to dream big then make my dreams my reality. I'm going to live, love, and laugh a lot more!
You see, back when 2012 was coming to an end, I was stressed out to a point that I had never been before and I hope to never be again! I was ending my final semester of college. I had huge projects due and couldn't afford to take time off of work so I was sleeping a max of 7 hours/week. Definitely not my shining moment. I was angry at life back then for seemingly having dropped me at the bottom of the heap! ((which was so NOT the case but nobody could convince me otherwise)). The lack of sleep combined with a lack of boundaries and defined life goals had seriously brought me down.

  Then like a ton of bricks, it hit me that I just needed to smile! :) Quick fact: I've always been known for my round-the-clock smile! It always disarms people. They are so confused by it at first. They'll say "Ugh, why are you always smiling?" or "What are you so happy for?" to which I've always replied. "I can't help it, I always smile. I love to smile!" Yeah, talk about totally throwing them for a loop. Most of the people could never really grasp that reason. Maybe there's a lack of happy people in the world? Apparently there's a lack of smiling people. But I digress. What I'm trying to say is that before life's inevitable trials marred my face, smiling was a key factor to my joy. I knew in that moment that the only way to start turning things around was to smile. After all, hasn't it been proven that smiling causes happiness?!

   And guess what? I was right! I am four months into 2013 and I'm happy again! I admit that I'm still
trying to figure out what exactly I want to do in life (career wise mostly) but that's exactly where I should be. For the moment I am 22 years old, and in the flawless words of Swifty, I am "Happy, Free, Confused, and Lonely at the same time! It's Miserable and Magical! - I don't know about you, but I'm feeling 22!" I am so lucky that song debuted during my 22nd year of life for obvious reasons! When I first heard it, I just was all like, "Taylor Swift, you're my soul sister! I've never loved you like I do now!" But even when I turn 23 later this year, it will still have a special place in my heart. Bunny trail alert! Anyways, all of that to say, I'm happy now!  My dreams are slowly becoming my reality. I've set myself some amazing and totally achievable goals. It's time to conquer the world by disarming people with my smile and my renewed passion for life!

  So now you know how easy it is! Before I go, I would like to challenge you all! I challenge you to smile. Right now! Just give it a try and report back to me with how it changed your day. I also challenge you to choose happiness because you are worth it! Life is really hard and it's easy to get bogged down. Let choosing happiness be the positive in your life. Now let's all go out and make the rest of 2013 happy by smiling whilst living out our dreams!

   xo. Brooke

             Oh, and a little gift to you from tumblr! It doesn't get cuter than One Direction laughing!