The Pocket Guide for Peculiar Living🌷 Being Your True Self

“Today you are you, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is you-er than you.”

— Dr. Seuss

Hello Folk of the Hollow!

I want to start out this post by talking a little bit about this new, like, series that I’m calling The Pocket Guide for Peculiar Living. The idea behind the guide is to provide inspiration to the denizens of the Hollow (that’s you!) to find ways to romanticize life and find the beauty and whimsy in the everyday. I hope that my little guide will help you be able to see the magic that is all around you!

You know, it’s a little ironic that I should start The Pocket Guide for Peculiar Living on the topic of being your truest self. If you’ve followed me on any of my social media accounts for any amount of time you’d know that being true to myself is something I’ve struggled with my entire life—but that’s also why I feel like it’s the perfect place to start. Being true to oneself is difficult to say the least, especially if you’re like me and were never really able to figure out who you really are until way into adulthood. Life, friends, family, and everything in between can have an impact on the way we view ourselves and the way we present ourselves to the world, and sometimes that doesn’t manifest in a way that is honest to the way we feel on the inside. Life is so short and it’s tragic that, rather than being unabashedly ourselves and shining a beacon to those who would accept us for how we are, we would rather shave down our edges to fit in where we don’t belong.

Unfortunately I can’t give you a step-by-step guide on how to find yourself. That’s a deeply personal journey that one must take on their own, because the very act of someone else telling you how to do it is antithetical to the very idea itself.

Now, you’re probably thinking “but Makayla! You said this was a guide on being my truest self! How can it be a guide if you can’t tell me what to do?”

I’m glad you asked.

What I can offer are suggestions on where to start. Sometimes what we need is a push in the right general direction before we can journey down the path for ourselves. So, dearest reader, here are my suggestions on how to start discovering who you are and becoming your best and truest self!

🦋 Think About Your Values: How you think and feel about certain topics is uniquely you. What are you in favor of? What are you against? What makes you feel good in this world and like you’re comfortable in your own skin? This goes deeper than surface level thinking, and will probably take the longest to excavate. That’s okay! Rome wasn’t built in a day, and you’re allowed to change your mind if you begin to feel that something no longer aligns with you the way it once did. The most important thing is that you feel right in your heart (and, of course, that it does no harm to you or anyone else, but that’s a given right?)

🦋 What Kinds of Things Do You Like?: If you were free to like anything at all—any movie, any musician, any show or game or book or what have you—without fear of what other people would think or say, what would it be? Do you like Evanescence even though all your friends like Gwen Stefani? (Can you tell by these references that I was an early 2000s kid?) Do you prefer staying in on a Friday night playing online games while the rest of your social circle likes going out dancing? Think about your preferences independent of anyone else’s influence. Right now, we’re only talking about you.

🦋 Dress How You Want to Dress: Recently on TikTok I’ve come across the concept of “Customizing Your Avatar in Real Life” which is, in essence, just being comfortable dressing in ways that allow you to express yourself. The world is so big and so beautiful, and it’s so sad that a lot of people choose to look a certain way just to fit in. Dye that hair, get that piercing, get that tattoo, wear those jeans—if it makes you feel good and aligns with the way you want to see yourself, then what anyone else thinks doesn’t matter. Like I said before, life is too short and the world is so much more vibrant when there are all kinds to fill it.

🦋 Follow Your Dreams (They Matter!): Have you always wanted to be a painter? A singer? A fashion designer? A writer? Whatever your dream is, go after it with all your heart and soul. If you could sit down and have a chat with the little kid you once were before you were poisoned with society’s rhetoric of be realistic, what would that child say? I know that, personally, my inner child would be over the moon to realize we now have a masters in Creative Writing with a Fiction concentration, and that soon we’re going to be getting a masters in literature. What would make the fragments of your child self starry-eyed with amazement? As long as it causes no harm to anyone, go for it! I believe in you! Also for this one I want to make a special mention: don’t get discouraged if, for example, people don’t respond to what you’re doing the way you want right away. The most important things for following your dreams are authenticity and consistency. Even if you have to do something just for yourself for a while, I promise that eventually your tribe will come to you and support you! As long as you’re being authentic, you’ll be all right 💚

🦋 Don’t Let Other People Silence Your Heart: So, so many of us have people in our lives who would rather we blend into the crowd like they have rather than be honestly ourselves. Now, if that’s just who you are then that’s perfectly fine—I support you in that, if it’s what makes you feel good and happy. But for those of us who find ourselves mired in sadness at the thought of being just another face on the street, I encourage you to follow your heart! This sort of wraps back around to a couple of the earlier points, but you need to listen to your heart (again, and I cannot stress this enough, as long as its safe and doesn’t hurt anyone!) and stand out if that’s what you want!

I hope you found this short little post helpful, and I hope you leave a comment telling me some of the steps you’ve taken to being your truest self! I can’t wait to hear all about it!

I’ll see you in the next one! Bye!