Anything is Possible
By Abby
It’s this tattoo that I want to explain, and I promise it will all come together. I’m the middle child, a rebellious one at heart (no pun intended ). No one in my family has tattoos. You get the gist. My roommate, my beloved first roommate who I am still friends with to this day, once had a conversation with me my freshman year in college about whether or not we’d want to get tattoos, and if so, would we do it together? The next day, I’m sitting in a class typing notes on my laptop, when a message notification fills my top right screen from my roommate “what if we got tattooed today?”. I excitedly respond, “I’m down,” and after class we watched three Youtube videos to prepare us: Advice from a professional tattoo artist, people getting tattooed for the first time, and what the tattoo needles hitting your skin actually looked like in a close-up. Shortly after, we walked up the street in our college’s downtown area and got tattooed. It’s this impulsive decision that permanently marked my skin, that at any moment, something or someone can turn your life into something great.
I pay and pave the way for my future career. I have a full ride to my first choice grad school with a great job lined up and I start in August. The experiences, job opportunities, activities, and more of good fortune go on. This isn’t to say I didn’t definitely have some privilege, support, and help along the way that I know not a lot of other kids our age were granted. However, I believe that we all hold our futures and the power to make of it what we want in our hands.
None of these ideas, goals, or passions of mine were given or advised to me by someone else. It came from, oddly enough, a vision board as a final project for my college economics class while I was in high school. Pictures of destinations, cars on winding roads, houses in cities and suburbia, castles, tattoos, and bucket list dreams of scuba diving with a whale (someday), showing my professor “my goals are for the next three to five years on this poster, and it goes diagonally, starting at the top left corner.” Since then, I’ve heard of vision boards being effective even for famous people like Drake, Justin Bieber, and Ed Sheeran. It’s something so simple, yet so effective. When was the last time you visualized where you want to be in the next three to five years? When was the last time you sat down and really thought about your goals? Your dreams? What ignites a fire in your soul, something you can talk about, listen to, watch, or read about for hours and never get tired of it? In the long run, it all comes down to how you see yourself, how you prioritize your goals and future, where you go and what you want to do.
Nowadays, I often find myself wanting to go on long roadtrips, to see the grand canyon, to see the ocean with friends. I want to live in Ireland, to write a book, to have an office that is painted yellow so the students who see me will leave feeling better about their future, and realizing it’s as bright as my office. I want to have a screened in front porch to my house, to have an art room, and paintings from Italy hung in my kitchen.
These goals aren’t unattainable. Some will take more time than others. I strongly believe, as my dad always told my sisters and I growing up, that you get out of life what you put into it. Meaning, the amount of energy, time, and research you put into something you are interested or passionate about, the more you will get out of it what you want. This quote has rung true with my various experiences from studying abroad, getting a tattoo or two, and road tripping with friends. It has shaped me to see that anything is possible if I put my head down, and run toward what I want with full determination. So, what’s stopping you from becoming your truest and happiest self? The only limit is yourself.
