I want to be a troublemaker.

I want to be an innovator, a game-changer, a person who challenges the status quo.

All my life, I have followed the rules. I’ve always stayed in line. I’ve never gotten into serious trouble. Now don’t get me wrong, I like that I have been a “good” girl up until this point of my life, but I feel as though all this staying in line has stifled me from living an exciting, laugh-out-loud, full-to-the-brim, crazy kind of life that I yearn to experience.

But what I am realizing is that in order to become a troublemaker (in the best way possible), I need to take risks. And no risk comes with a 100 percent guarantee that it will work. It wouldn’t be a risk if there wasn’t a chance of failure.

All this standing in line, achieving things according to the rules has made me so afraid. Afraid of that failure that comes with risk. Afraid of the next step, of messing up and never being able to fix it.

All I got from following the rules was success in the most boring and unsatisfying way. Sure I’m proud I finished high school and went to college and did all the work that was required of me in school and did most of it well enough to get high grades and I only missed three classes in my entire college experience. And sure, I feel proud that I graduated from a four-year college in four years with a high GPA and honors to go along with it.

But I haven’t had many major failures in my life; I haven’t taken those risks that make life interesting and worth living. And I feel that at this moment in time, it is a huge disadvantage for me. Well, there is one main part of my life that I have failed at (which I do not feel comfortable announcing to the whole world, or maybe just the few people who come across these words), and even in this aspect I have stumbled and fallen and it has taken an extremely long time for me to get back up and try again.

I have been conditioned to avoid failure and major risk like it’s the plague, and like Pavlov’s dogs, it has worked on me.

The key thing is that we can only get better after we have failed. Without failure, we wouldn’t be pushed to be better, to get up and redo something again and again and again until it’s right and good and will work.

I want to be a troublemaker. Bring on the risk. Because I know my life will be better for it.

XOX OXO XOX