Writing Prompt: I seek and embrace new opportunities by...

“I seek and embrace new opportunities by _________.”

And we’re back with our writing prompts! I am currently at my weekly writer’s meetup group, and we’ve just started our hour of writing. Before I left my apartment, I was sure to take a picture of the above prompt, and I am all too eager to answer this for myself and for you.

When I think about seeking and embracing new opportunities, I think of how it starts with an open mindset. When you’re closed off and forcing yourself into new opportunities, it still usually works, but the ride to get there is just not as fun as it could be. I think of when I transferred to a university here in Oklahoma, and I was (what I thought of myself as) an unmedicated mess. I was struggling with anxiety and depression hard, and my doctor and I had been flip-flopping between different medicines, trying to get one that worked. The anxiety caused me not to have much of an appetite, and I worked out multiple times a day, causing me to be the thinnest I had ever been in my young adulthood. But, of course, I didn’t notice at the time and was still striving to be even thinner. I wasn’t doing well, but my grades were great, so I didn’t think much of how I was doing internally. I just tried as hard as I could to work out the stress and anxiety out of my body. I moved to Oklahoma from Ohio as a 20-year-old sophomore in college, and I only knew of one distant family friend who attended the same school as me. We traveled back and forth from Oklahoma to Ohio, and those were incredibly cramped rides, each seat in the SUV occupied by his brother and cousins. We spent a little bit of time together outside of that, but not much. So, during the actual school year, I came to the realization that I would have to put myself out there to make new friends. When my sweet neighbor/chaplain who is now one of my best friends would pop her head in my door and ask if I wanted to hang out, I said yes. When new friends were going to Starbucks to study for a while and asked me, I said yes. When a sweet, awkward girl asked if I wanted to watch a show with her and her roommate, I said yes. You get it — when opportunities arose to be around people, I would say yes. I feared that if I ever said no, I’d miss out on something important or risk the revocation of someone’s offer of friendship. One thing you probably already know about me (or just assumed because I’m a writer) is that I am an introvert, and in order not to internally or mentally combust, I need time to myself to recharge. During that first year of school, I didn’t get much time to myself. The anxiety and stress I experienced from not getting enough time to myself were partially worked out via the stationary bike and treadmill in our dorm’s little gym on the first floor. I would watch new episodes of The Bachelor and pedal my little heart out, and I was usually alone in that room. The leftover anxiety that wouldn’t budge was just… there, and I tried my hardest to ignore it. The stress from getting good grades and making sure I was doing enough to make friends and not wasting my parents’ money on my whole college experience was a lot during that time. But, in the end, I forced myself to be open to new experiences, and it paid off. I made friends. I graduated magna cum laude. It took me many more years to finally get on the right medicines (like pretty much just last year), and I still have a horrible relationship with my body and exercise, but the other stuff won out in my mind. Those friends I made in college are now my best friends and all of the other crap was worth it. I just wish I actually took care of myself along the way.

Today, when I think about how I approach seeking and embracing new opportunities, it’s still mostly about the mindset. However, I have put more importance on my mental health and well-being and make sure that they’re in a healthy spot before I possibly push myself out of my comfort zone in social settings. I try my best to not approach new opportunities with a fear-based “Will I miss out if I say no?” which spirals to (a la anxiety) “What if I don’t go and then don’t meet someone that would lead to a cool friendship/relationship and my life is a little bit worse all because I said no?” Thanks to proper medications and just overall life experience, I approach new opportunities with a simple question, “Do I want to do this?” I like to tell myself that I am always open to new opportunities, but in reality, I’m not. I don’t like change. It’s something that I’m actively working on and need to constantly remind myself that “change is not always bad.” A nice, slow evolution is more my speed, but oftentimes, quick changes happen, and you can’t do anything about them. You just have to say yes.

Reagan Fleming

Writing Prompts

Sometimes I feel like a cheater in the creative process.

When I use writing prompts, I often feel like somebody else did the imaginative legwork for me while I do the easy part, which is the writing. With this thinking, I often tell myself that what I wrote is unimportant and not really my own piece. However, I learned through a discussion over a beer with my sister and her boyfriend that we all excel in different areas of the creative process. For example, my sister is a very talented interior designer and stylist and knows which pieces would fit where to make a space as welcoming and as beautiful as it could possibly be. (I personally panic when tasked with simply rearranging a single room.) She does really well in the inception of the creative idea and flow. Her boyfriend enjoys the middle part of the process, which is the part where he is actually doing the creative thing and creating something. He is a crazy good photographer who specializes in interior design. So, interior designer + photographer of said interior design = match made in heaven. For me, my favorite part is near the end of the process when I have a clear idea of what needs to be created or someone has literally told me what to write (writing prompt or professor), and I’m either just tweaking somebody else’s work to make it the best that it could possibly be or writing something of my own after all ideas and flow of the piece have been figured out. That’s why I enjoy editing so much. Someone else has already sprouted a new idea, jotted down their ideas, an outline, or a chapter or two, and I go in and edit it. It’s not that any part of the process is worth less or more than the other; they’re all of equal importance and all needed to have the final piece come to being. Different people just excel at different parts of the process.

The reason I bring up writing prompts is because my sister and her boyfriend got me a box of Rupi Kaur’s writing prompts for Christmas. As a person who panics when tasked with imagining up a new idea for a book or blog post, this was a perfect gift for me. Hence the reason why some of my blog posts have been about “What I’m listening to now!” or “What I’m reading lately!” I’ve decided that for my next few blog posts (or every blog post from here on out, who knows), I will take a card from the stack and write about whatever it’s prompting me to write about. Today’s card says:

Becoming more self-aware has shown me _____.

My first thought when I read this is that it is very evident when someone is not self-aware, but it can be sometimes hard to tell when someone is. There’s a particular girl on one of the most recent seasons of Love Is Blind — yes, I’m a reality show kind of girl — and she simply embodies what it’s like to not be self-aware. She has said things such as how intelligent she is, how mature she is, and how self-aware she is, just to name a few. Part of the definition of being self-aware is that you understand how your actions and words have an impact on those around you. Throughout the entire process of meeting her fiance, living as an engaged couple, and then in the end when she decides not to marry him, she clearly does not understand this concept. Anytime she interacted with her fiance, she belittled him, insulted him and his intelligence, and was just completely mean to him. He had the patience of a saint in order to deal with her for as long as he did, and they broke it off the day that she was supposed to try on wedding dresses for their upcoming nuptials. Watching her on the screen made me wonder how/why she got to this point. Hasn’t anyone told her how mean she is? She tries to mask her meanness by calling herself a blunt person, but I think that there’s a fine line between being blunt and being mean. She was just plain mean.

I believe that there are external hints that someone is self-aware, such as them being kind, a good listener to others, in touch with their own emotions, and it seems that they know themselves. I remember hearing from some podcast that it’s not about knowing yourself but instead learning more about yourself along the way. I’m not sure that there’s ever one moment when it clicks for someone after journaling a bunch that they have officially found themselves. I don’t believe that it’s a finish line to cross but an ever-evolving discovery of yourself and improving yourself. It’s all about looking inward and making space for all emotions that come up. I strive to be a self-aware person, which is something I think a lot of people strive to be as well. I think that I’m a good listener and can sense when my actions or words have a negative effect on people, but when it comes to allowing space for all emotions, negative and positive, I have a difficult time. I have trouble receiving criticism because I take it personally (which I’m working on), and I often don’t believe positive things that others tell me (i.e., I feel incredibly awkward receiving compliments and have the kind of self-talk that needs to be worked on with my therapist). For years, I believed that any negative emotion was something to repel, not something that you allow and inspect such as, “Why am I feeling this way?” When thinking about the prompt of “Becoming more self-aware has shown me (blank),” I think that my continual journey of becoming more self-aware has shown me that it’s not all about me. Yes, I deal with difficult things and am faced with a lot of challenges, but so is everyone else. (This has an equal calming and depressing effect for me.) We’re all unique people, equipped with our own skills and doubts and fears. Connecting with others allows us to realize just how similar yet different we are from one another. Because we all bring something different to the table and all provide different points of view and skillsets, each of us is necessary for the creative process.

Reagan Fleming

It's been 84 years...

It hasn’t been 84 years, but it sure does feel like that.

First off, apparently Squarespace has AI features now. That is horrifying to me, so I will absolutely try to ignore that feature that’s in the shape of a lightning bolt in the corner of the screen that’s waves me Hello as I try to write this. Sometimes, technology is horrifying.

Secondly, I’m 28, so it has not been 84 years since I’ve last been on this website writing to you all. But, it has been a few months. Apologies. Things have been busy, to say the least. There was a time a few weeks ago that I was so stressed about some things that were happening in my life that I kept dreaming (for a week straight) that either I or my loved ones were getting murdered. So, that wasn’t great. The other stressful but incredible thing that’s happening is that I’m in grad school! I’m approaching my second week, so send prayers. I’m currently in the middle of 3 books, so I’m reading like my life depends on it. My scholarship does, in fact, depend on how well I do in these classes. So, I’m trying to be as on top of things as I possibly can. Who knew that getting a master’s in English would mean you read hundreds of pages a week? Well, I did. Here we are.

Another fun tidbit that’s really new is that I have joined a writer’s group. Shoutout to you guys, because I am currently writing during one of our meetings. I am currently experiencing what the experts call “writer’s block” with a certain part of my book, so I’m mixing things up and writing on here instead. Here’s to hoping that these oat milk mochas that I drink at this coffee shop meeting place gives me enough strength and mental vigor to finish this book. It’s one that I’ve been working on for years, one that I famously (amongst my friend group) completely lost when I accidentally spilled a pumpkin spice latte on my latte without having backed up my book up until that point. Apparently flirting with a barista can distract you enough that you knock over a tablespoon’s worth amount of PSL and completely destroy a laptop that housed everything that you had been working on for years. So, yeah. Flirting is dangerous in my eyes.

Here we are, everyone. 2024: I’ll be turning 29 years old which is horrifying/exciting; I’ll have finished my first year of grad school (wut); I might have what’s considered medium-length hair by December (fingers crossed I don’t get the urge to do anything edgy and rash); hopefully I’ll get many more tattoos; and Harper, my dog, will be 8 years old. Things are weird but a good weird. I have a good feeling about 2024.

And with that, my farewell. Godspeed.

Reagan Fleming