#13: Make Your Own Rules!

When I was in high school, the cool thing to do on Friday afternoons in the Fall was to go “tailgate” before our football games and then go to the game. My best friend in high school loved (or more accurately loves) football so I went. My alternative was to…well…honestly, I probably had some decent alternatives because I had a lot of great and cool friends who didn’t partake of the football cup. But, let’s be honest though…they weren’t the “super cool” (whatever that means) kids…so to the game I went.

I used to be a firm believer that black absolutely, under no circumstances, ever went with brown. You wouldn’t catch me sporting the two together; that was a huge fashion faux pas I was not willing to make.

Until the day I began undergraduate school, I thought you had to get up every single morning and shower, wash and dry your hair, fix it, put on make up, and look “good” …or at least put together.

Alright…I admit it…I was the smelly, frumpy girl at UGA. 

I also didn’t realize until recently (as in within the past year) that I could challenge others, what they thought about the world, what they thought about me, and their general disposition towards me. 

“What!!? Me question anything!!?” …It just wasn’t happening.

Until one day I realized…I was playing by everyone else’s rules.

I was living my life according to the way others thought best.

Weird, huh? Why would anyone do such a thing? Well, I can tell you that part of it was growing up with a person I look up to treating me as if any conflicting opinion of mine was a personal insult and stab in the back towards them. (That could have something to do with it, huh!??) So that was part of it, but I’ve also discovered that girls are, generally, more inclined to simply take things at face value. We just don’t question as much as you boys do.

This is a mistake.

Rules are great…but only as long as they are in line with who you are and what you believe.

I now wear white any day of the year I’d like. I think washing my hair every two days is acceptable. I think showering at night is a brilliant concept. I don’t enjoy high school football games (still). Tailgating is meant to be done in a living room if you ask me. I wear black with brown with gray with a different shade of brown, all together…and I like it. I like bows and ribbons so sometimes I wear them. I love sweat pants and don’t think it’s unacceptable to venture out into the world in them. I wear glasses…for fun. I sometimes love make up and sometimes hate it. (Beauty doesn’t come from a bottle.) I’m okay with the fact that my car still has part of “WASH ME” written on it because our Saturday was cut short three four weeks ago and he didn’t actually get to wash it and now it’s dirtier than before and it has rained…go figure. 

I get it wrong more often than I get it right…but at least when I get it wrong I know it’s because I imposed something silly and outrageous on myself. No one else told me how to live, dress, speak, act, sing, laugh, dance, walk, etc.

And that…I can live with.

Now go…make your own rules. Have fun. Live. 

And don’t forget…rules are made to be broken, especially your own.