Do you ever see someone walking down the street and see an aspect in them that you wish that you had? For example, I love seeing people who stand out. I love it when someone has bright, fiery, red and orange hair. I love it when I see someone with a really fun and cool tattoo. I love seeing someone who is ridiculously fit and you know that they work hard to look how they do. I love being able to see people’s personalities coming out of them in a way that can be physically seen at any moment.

At the beginning of the year, I made multiple New Year’s resolutions. I decided to take better care of myself (not to lose weight, but rather to understand that it’s OK to let yourself be sick), to try to get more of my work published (part of being the best person that I can be) and finally, I want to be the person my mom thinks that I am.

My mom thinks that I am the best thing ever. She thinks that I’m not afraid of anything. So I decided to be less afraid. I don’t want to be fearless and stupid, but I am trying to be less afraid of what people think of me.

I decided to stop saying, “Wow, I wish that I could do that.” Now I’m going to say, “That’s cool, I should try that.” As a part of this idea, I dyed my hair. I decided that I wanted fun, new hair, so I dyed it. It’s now dark blue with pink streaks, and I love it. I saw a girl with blue hair and it made her eyes look so pretty, so I decided to try it.

I’m submitting all of the work for publication that I feared would get rejected. That fear kept me from achieving bigger things.

Another fear has held me back for a while. My fear of needles. I hate needles (ironically, I used to be a nursing major) and this has kept me from getting a tattoo for a long time. I decided to face my fear of needles and got a tattoo that means a lot to me. I’m finally comfortable with who I am. I have confidence like you wouldn’t believe.

The whole point of this little rant is to tell you guys that it’s OK to take your lives into your own hands. Stop caring what everyone thinks of you (except for your boss—you should probably listen to what they think).

If there is something that you want to do, do it. If there’s something that needs to be done, do it. Don’t just wait around for other people to do things for you, because when it comes down to it, only you are the one who answers for your decisions. I was sick of feeling like I’m a boring person, so I refused to let myself be boring. Life is crazy like that; at any given moment we can do anything that we want to, and I think that, in general, we are constantly forgetting that only we control our lives.