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Blog Entry 84 of 105 Places To Go, People to See
A new blog from the Buffalo born author of the novel, 'Traveling With An Eggplant', that deals with her work, book tour, and ridiculous midadventures, as well as descriptions of Clarence bars, restaurants, businesses, parks, etc so that people know more about her hometown and get a humorous look at what's featured in Clarence and what being there is really like so that they want to make an effort to check it out. People actually living in Buffalo have zero excuse for not going anyways but hopefully the blog will give them that extra push. For more info, there's always the official site: www.alyciaripley.com where you can read all about the lively, eccentric brunette and what she's currently up to. In addition to promoting "Eggplant," her new book 'Try Anything Once' should hit stores in late summer '07 followed by a novel called 'Winterphoenix' shortly thereafter. She is also an obsessive copyeditor, the co-editor of an anthology book of works by Buffalo born writers along with notorious Buffalo man about town essayist, Tom Waters as well as being a commentator for this just-born site. She has performed in many NYC stage productions and has an upcoming extended stay in Los Angeles to further her film work. Her nomadic life has helped her to appreciate what Buffalo and in particular, Clarence, NY has to offer, so get there already and see what all the fuss is about.

Blog Url: http://buffalo.yourhub.com/~AlyciaRipley

Life isn't finding yourself, its creating yourself

Contributed by: Alycia Ripley   on 4/29/2008

You can laugh at my title all you want but I think I'm on to something. I semi-cringe whenever I hear the term or that someone is 'finding themselves" and I think I have for years- it always struck me as a strange and semi-indulgent sort of idea but now I think of it as just plain wrong. If there's anything these last few months in CA have taught me is that when put to the test of hard work, proactivity, lonlieness and a sense of overwhelming obstacles, your true self comes out. And of course that's based on talents, personality and past experiences, of course we each have a SELF. But I think in times like those there is more of a truth in creating who you want to be. There's never a sense of failure because you can always create who you want to be and keep going with it. So while of course by the time we are 25 or 30 we have a baseline personality, we can always add, subtract, multiply or divide our many characteristics to be more towards the person we are trying to achieve. This always reminds me of my favorite drag queens and club kids like Amanda Lepore who take who they know they are and want to be and just keep going and going and showing and creating that person for everyone else to see. I think we can each start over each and every day and keep creating and morphing into the person we want to resemble. This happens to me all the time- I'll want to work on a certain thing and I don't quite get it under control one day but then I get it more and more the following and following day until I think consciously about it and have successfully 'changed' a personality characteristic for the better! Nothing makes me happier than 'conquering' myself and having the discipline it takes to do it. We all have that discipline, we just need to remember that our achievements can not only be measured in the eyes of others because let me tell you something. When someone has a certain schema set about you, say a friend or co-worker and you amend it, it takes them a while to accept and 'see' that change because it's confusing to them. This goes from everything such as eating less, talking less, standing up for yourself more, being more organized, having a better phone voice, whatever. I've learned that people are so into themselves and the way they PROCESS you that it sometimes takes them a while or with some reminding, that you're a bit different than perhaps what they wanted to box you in as. It takes a while sometimes for people's schemas to change but once they do, they do, and you'll feel so accomplished at getting closer to what you wanted to be and be seen as. I don't feel life is about finding yourself because that implies that you're stuck with whatever or whoever it is that you find and that just lets people off the hook too much. It's about constantly working to improve ourselves, to be the best versions of ourselves that we can be and sometimes under not so good circumstances. I think it would be considered self-actualizing. It's possible to like who you are and find out what you're capable of becoming, but I think that the end result is choice- you have to either settle for what you are, or create when you want to be and CAN be, so at the risk of sounding like a Nancy Reagan 80's advertisement, I wanted to share that sentiment because it's been on my mind a lot. You may have setbacks and I know I do for sure, but that's the beauty of it, as long as you know what you're going for and try to create that person, you're on your way there. I'd like to say that when its the end of my line, I became the person I wanted to be when I was younger, someone akin to what my idols were like, the best possible version of myself mixed in with some awesome positive influences and that's all we can ask for ourselves. So at the risk of having made almost every reader gag at this self-help announcement, I need to go now. Ithink I almost gagged myself but still, think about it for a minute and it DOES make some sort of sense.


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CONTRIBUTOR INFO

Alycia Ripley

Clarence , NY

Alycia Ripley has posted 105 blog entries and 3 comments since joining on 12/6/2006. Alycia Ripley 's average blog rating is 4.46.
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