Two years, seven months.
One-hundred-ninety-nine posts.
Infinite change.

“People don’t change,” I’d told him adamantly. There was an anger, a harshness is my voice that wasn’t typical for me. Well — maybe it was for the time. Somewhere in the dark, I could feel his eyes rolling.

“They don’t,” I insisted. “People always say they’ve changed, and maybe they work at it for awhile, but they always revert to who they were to begin with. They don’t change, they only make an effort to be better or different. Sometimes it’s successful, and sometimes it isn’t. No matter what, whatever flaw they’re trying to change is hiding just beneath the surface. It’s there. They haven’t changed.”

I believed that vehemently a year and a half ago, when I wrote this entry, explaining why I’d told him that. Because I had never changed. As much as I didn’t want to be, I was still a coward. I was still lazy. I was still a liar.

Coward. Lazy. Liar.

Those were my three fatal flaws. They were a part of me. They were lifelong enemies, and I’d be fighting my whole life against them.

Except fast forward to a year and a half later — here we are. Am I still a coward? Am I lazy? Am I a liar?

Well, let’s see. Despite never being outside of the country, save for Mexican resorts, despite not speaking the language, despite a constant fear of never making friends — I moved to Chile.

More than that, though — I’ve thrived here. I fought past my fear of putting myself on a limb to make a lot of good friends. So…I think, that even though there are parts of me that still make me nervous, like calling my boss to make sure I have a job when I get home, I’m pretty confident in saying that I’ve kicked that fear in the ass. It no longer defines me and what steps I take in my life.

I’ll get rejected someday. But that’s okay.

Lazy? Sure. I just finished grading the midterms I gave two weeks ago. I took a three or four month blog hiatus. I have my moments, but in working very independently with my old job, and with the job I have keeping internet stuff maintained, being flat-out lazy isn’t really an option.

Am I lazy? No. Unmotivated? At times. But aren’t we all?

How about liar? I only lied in the past to cover up those two other flaws. So, without having to deal with those two much, my need to lie is dormant. We’ll see how it fares when faced with necessity.

Coward? Nope. Lazy? Change the vernacular — I’m just occasionally unmotivated. Liar? Negative.

I was talking with one of my best friends on Skype yesterday when it dawned on me…I’ve actually changed. 

But I still think I was halfway right — trying to change, gauging your progress, making that constant effort, isn’t how you make real change happen. If you’re fighting to be different, it can’t be all that real.

Instead, after a number of experiences, both based on actions of your own and on outside influences, you’ll turn to look down the path you’ve been walking, and what you’ll see are the pieces you’ve left behind. You’ll look in the mirror and notice a new laugh line. At that, you should smile. Somehow, you’ve changed.

Back then, I was terribly unhappy with myself and my life. I obsessed over those flaws, worried about them, battled with them, and always felt like I was losing. It wasn’t until I stopped giving a shit, when I became too happy with my life and the friends I had around me that I could start to really change.

And part of that change is completely credited to this blog, this small community that I’ve had reading along with me, cheering from the sidelines. Here I am now: two and a half years, 200 posts, a whole new person.

Thank you for that. When I get home I’m making you cookies. Really!

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, it’s spring here now.