Applications!

A necessary evil for the baby adult...

As someone who usually mainly does tasks with some sense of novelty attached to them- like building universes on fresh newly bought journals, or swinging back and forth on a pole because it’s cute- it’s not surprising that filling out applications is one of my least favourite activities. 

In the past few years, I have filled out forms, written essays, rewritten CVs (guys did you know you never stop updating that shit?), gathered documents, created portfolios and filled out so many forms as a process of asking for something. 

It’s a rude (very rude mind you) thing that, as a young adult half your time would be spent on the screen, filling out forms for a job, a scholarship, travel visas, university applications, contracts, grants and whatnot. It’s endless piles of paperwork just waiting for you day after day because you decided to want something enough to ask for it. 

Sometimes, I feel very ‘adult’ when I find myself running through forms with the information at my fingertips cause I’ve had enough experience to do them with that much ease right? And I often think that’s a chunk of what adulting is; doing the boring but necessary paperwork to get your life together or at least hanging by a cloth instead of a thread. 

I was listening to a recent podcast episode by

Katerina Eleftheriou

and she talked about how asking for something alone is such a powerful thing to do. It makes loads of sense to think about applying for stuff in the same way. 

I keep hearing Abbey Lee say “You have to want it” in the back of my brain lately and it’s never been more true for me. I don’t believe in doing things I don’t ‘want’ to do but I’m learning a lot that there are some unforgivably necessary tasks to do to move forward in life.

I feel like wanting stuff enough to ask for it is a huge deal because whether you believe it or not, when we ask for what we want it’s a way of telling the universe and ourselves that we believe that (there is a chance) that we are deserving of what we so desire. And in a world where it’s easy to have crippling self-esteem, I see that as a win. 

So yeah, I still dread and feel annoyed about filling out forms and asking for random stuff but it makes sense to reframe it \as me proactively taking steps to better my life, slow as it may seem to be, it is a sign that I can put in the work on myself, it’s me telling the universe that yes I want this enough, it’s me learning to trust myself to articulate my thoughts and realise that maybe some opportunities aren’t worth it enough to fill a freaking form out. As the reality of how time-consuming it can be to do so, it forces me to think about how badly I want something, cause some application processes are so long it’s not even worth it anymore.

So maybe the thing between you and your blessing is one stupid long ass form or one DM away and here we are sitting procrastinating because ‘it’s too hard and so long’ really? (I say this as the pending forms I have to fill stare back at me with blank spaces 😅) but like all skills and abilities it gets better with time and practice. Plus it’s awesome knowing you’re doing stuff literal companies are set up to do. Think about it, filling forms is that big a deal that people pay literal companies to apply for stuff on their behalf, write essays here and there and here you are doing most of it yourself! 

Anyway, stay happy that you’re putting some level of effort into yourself and your development, if you can outsource though, do it abeg, and save your time. 

Question: What’s a time when you applied for something and the outcome was surprisingly good? Let me know in the comments.

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Author’s Note :

Helloooooo! As you can probably tell, life’s been a series of paperwork here and there but what to do right? Anyway, I’ve been working on my manuscript again, decided to take it more seriously and I’m documenting my journey on TikTok, so check it out here! do it now!

Song of The Week:

I’m currently listening to Strawberries by Eric Nam, I think this is what they mean by songs for summer right?

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