Think beyond the now and trust yourself! Manifest!

Teenage years emotions for me felt pretty intense as I’m sure they do for everyone, and the only way I could channel that somewhere was into music and art and making things, making clothes, making anything. I think I realised quite early on that was what I had to do for my sanity. These intense feelings were even more so intense given I grew up in the complete middle of nowhere, nothing around, no friends easily reachable, no siblings and my parents relationship to only be described as something destructible and painful before they finally divorced. All this accumulated into feelings of intense isolation early on in life and made me very much rely on myself and look inward. Looking back I'm super grateful to have had all that time to escape into creatively. I'm indebted to it and it's given me such a deeper understanding of myself as an individual. School was ‘interesting’, I loved learning and burying myself into that world and being a nerd, knowing if I wanted to go somewhere beyond where I was, that would be my ticket. I had friends there but even then I never felt like I completely found ‘my people’ with who I belonged with. I really had to believe I just had to hold on and wait till my circumstances would change until I could finally be myself. Being a creative nerd who didn't like the same things the other kids liked also made me a HUGE target as the quiet weirdo (of course) and kids loved to torment me and sabotage my work. It only pushed me further to follow my own path and be myself. When I made the decision to study Sound Engineering over Art for University and went to study at LIPA, I felt like I could finally be who I wanted to be and I made sure I made up for lost time. That wasn’t easy to begin with however. My teachers sat down with me at parents evening, discouraging me from choosing to study music production “setting yourself up to fail” were the words used (this despite having gotten A’s!). To me there was clearly a stereotype of a person who was expected to do well in those subjects in the outside world (the confident man) and I didn’t fit that stereotype. To me I didn't care if that pathway was “successful”, it's given me so many experiences I am proud of, however big or small. It took alot to have the self belief and conviction to defy that advice, but only I knew how much I needed to pursue music and to trust myself. Only you know yourself! People may often give you advice based on their own experiences and biases which aren't always entirely relevant to you. You can take advice but not have to live by it. Life is simply too short so do what you want! I guess my message with all this is I’d say to my younger self to think beyond what’s immediate and be patient with things to come. Situations change and things pass, everything is temporary. You’re responsible for yourself and you control your choices, stay true to yourself. And to not hide who you are or hold yourself back or dull that down. I shouldn't have had to wait to feel like I could be myself but I guess that was a barrier I felt I needed to make to get through that. For me being able to channel into creative things gave me a purpose beyond what was immediate to me, I highly recommend finding something, anything to enjoy in that way. Those experiences helped me to ultimately trust myself and you should too.