jack of all trades, master of none

2014 started off very superficial for me. it was all about the surface of things - the look, the job, the connections, the money, elevating the status - after being slighted left and right the year before, i went into 2014 thinking "i need to be important, or, at the very least, make others believe i'm important." 

the second half of the year showed me that this was the wrong approach. a lot of that "perfection" on the surface that i had been building for years crumbled at my feet in the most personal of ways. still waters definitely do run deep. i plunged into the notions of who i was, who i am, and, the most burdensome of all, who i am perceived to be. the three different me's that inevitably make up who i will become. 

as i was on the couch earlier today, scrolling through everyone else's reflections, i thought to myself, "when, if ever, in 2014 did you feel like you were becoming who you are meant to be?" for a long time, sifting through all of those superficial goals and achievements, i couldn't think of anything. that is, until i envisioned myself confidently navigating through some random brooklyn streets, simultaneously searching for apartments and the office buildings in which my final interviews were being held. that was, in 2013, exactly who i wanted to become, the me that was standing there on a corner in downtown brooklyn in mid-march of 2014 bringing my eighteen year old dreams to life. i thought about my trip to portugal and about how, back in november of 2013, i listened as my mother received a phone call from overseas saying that my grandfather was in extremely poor health. i remember, just a few weeks later, entering 2014 with a prayer that the plane tickets i had spent all of my little savings on was not in vain and that, in late april, i would be able to see my grandfather, my only living grandparent, in his home in portugal, and that our encounter would be, in a way, the reconciliation with the regret i had in my heart of never truly meeting my grandmothers before they passed. that exemplified who i have always wanted to become - someone who learned from her losses, someone who did what she felt in her heart was right, without fearing the sacrifices it may require. of all the things that happened to me in 2014, those are the two moments i remember most. in those moments i felt like i was who i am truly meant to be. 

i sat sandwiched between two random canadian men in the back of a cab tonight (a story for another time). one of them mentioned that he had been living in italy for the past few years. my friend who was sitting in the front seat turned and asked him what he does for a living out there. "oh, some opera, some finance, and some teaching," he said. my friend and i looked at him with surprise and my friend asked, "really?! how did you get into all of those different things?" and he responded, "well... 'jack of all trades, master of none,' i suppose." 

i tuned out and repeated that phrase in my head for a while. the former part of it reminded me of my start to 2014 and all i had been building before, the latter of what's to come in 2015 and beyond. every year it's the same goal with a new twist. i guess my reflection is this: the resolution of life is to master the self.