#TBT

Considering that I am now super serious about my blog and my writing (I even made a Facebook page -- click & like, please!), I thought it would be pretty fun to start a throwback Thursday series on the blog! I'll try to dig up some old photographs from my younger and wonder years, as well as touch back on old posts I've written over the years. I'm not sure if I can actually get away with saying that I have written posts over the years though, because while it's technically true, since I started the blog in October of 2011, I have only posted 141 times. Now 142. But, who's keeping track of all that stuff anyways, right?

So since this is the first ever #TBT for ADD Adventures, I think it only appropriate that I take us all back in time to the magical year of 2011. More specifically, to Sunday, October 23, 2011, or better known to all of us from this moment on as the birth of ADD Adventures!

{{ Here you can read the full first post }}

It was a crazy time, it was a wild time, it was a weird time. I was less than two months away from finishing college, and had little-to-no idea what was going to happen next. I'm not really sure what it was that caused me to decide it was time to start a blog, but I think it probably had something to do with the fact that I knew in the depths of my heart that I would return abroad someday, and that a blog was a good way to diary it all, share it all, and let's be honest, make a little extra money. (Something that I am still hoping will happen, and waiting to experience.)

In my first post I wrote a general introduction of myself, and reading it now, I can just feel how young I was. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm still young (25 in February, please make donations to the Kickstarter fund I am considering setting up to help fund my life), but just reading that post from two years ago, I realize how much I've grown since then...

I am 22-years young, direction-less, and loving it! I use emoticons like it's my job, and love to write! I have been plagued with the need to travel and explore the world we live in, and cannot rest until I have done so.

I still remember that being my catchphrase back then -- young, direction-less, and loving it! And I really was! I was so young, I had noooo direction, nor could I have cared less! I loved the fact that my life was undetermined and unplanned, and relished in the excitement of not knowing what I would do next. I still do enjoy this quite a bit, although I have begun to think a bit about what I can start doing for myself now that will help me out when I'm a much older and less capable version of myself. I still use emoticons like it's my job, and I do still really enjoy writing. And I think the fact that I have since moved to Spain and decided to plan my life entirely around living all over the world are both pretty good indicators that I still have this deep desire to travel and explore. (And I now realize how dramatic it was to call it a "need to travel," as opposed to a deep-rooted longing and desire. A calling perhaps, but not so much a necessity. Or maybe. . .)

One of my favorite parts (aka parts I am especially embarrassed about) is where I describe myself as being,

Self-diagnosed with bipolar disorder, that can be attributed to my extreme ADD, and complete lack of ability to commit, make a decision and stick with it, and horrid habit of blurting out my ever-changing opinions, feelings, and ideas about anything at a given time, entirely based off of my current mood. 

I mean, my goodness! Not only does that run-on sentence make my toes curl, but it also makes me realize how "under the spell" I still was. I clearly was not yet of this super-positive and proactive mind that I now have, and therefore ran around thinking I had all sorts of psychiatric conditions and oddities that I could use to describe my natural weirdness. I have since fully accepted all my strangeness, and decided that it's more fun to embrace it and just be a bit of a freak. :)

However, I really love to look back at the final part of the post, in which I share where I was at in life at the time... 

My current situation is this: I am graduating in December as a marketing major, Spanish minor, and need to figure out my life! I am going to apply to go back to Spain as a teaching assistant, and refuse to believe that my future holds anything else. This blog is going to serve the purpose of tracking my life, and giving you the people an inside glance to the mind of someone who is ADD, and off their meds 8D

I don't just love it because I can see this was the after the first time I decided to take myself off the ADD medication I had been ingesting for about 13-14 years (something that was possibly the cause of me failing, quite horribly, the entire first round of my final semester exams, as well as some of the second, but more on that later), but because of this line here: "I am going to apply to go back to Spain as a teaching assistant, and refuse to believe that my future holds anything else."

Now, I don't know about you, but for me to be sitting and grooving in my bed in Sevilla, Spain, where I arrived 11 months and two days ago, writing this and seeing that, I am left with every centimeter of my skin fluttering like there are butterflies trapped inside me. All I can say is, "I FREAKIN' DID IT!!!!!!!!!!!" Estoy tan orgullosa ahora mismo (I am so proud right now)! I did it, I did it, I did it! I came back! I refused to accept that my path would flow any other way, and I made it happen! I am here! I am doing it!!

This is a powerful moment for me. To remember all the times people told me that, "it sounds like a great plan, it's just not very realistic," and doubted how I could and would make it happen, and to know that I actually have and am, wow. I feel like I can do anything now! 

If I could make this happen for myself, and be blessed with such success, I know that I am on the right track, and that whatever I want to do in life, I can! By going and flowing with God, there is absolutely no limit to the things this human life of mine will produce! I am so excited to continue this path -- trying new things, beginning new projects, exploring my passions and purposes, and blasting out my special breed of positivity and love into the atmosphere! What a wild ride it has been, and an even wilder one it will be! I hope you'll continue to join me, and hey, come on out and make it your reality too, whenever you want!

Please remember how capable and powerful you are. There is something you are here to do; and if you get a sense for it, run with it, sprint towards it, and give it all you've got, you will achieve and receive endlessly. As long as you follow your heart, let God be your guide, and pursue your passions, there can be nothing but goodness to come from it. You're magic!

Enjoy life!! There is no limit to what can be done while we're here!

Sending you sweet, sweet blessings, and abundant amounts of love & light on this beautiful day!

Shine on darlings!