I Am Plain Avocado Toast, And That's Okay

 
I am plain avocado toast.
Scratch that.
Right now I am plain avocado toast. Right now this blog is plain avocado toast. And that is okay.

Avocado toast is a glorious meal that you can have anytime of the day. A delicious, “basic” culinary treat that seemed to hold a place in our hearts overnight, yet has been around for a bit.

Avocado toast: *it me!
 

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Allow me to explain:
I’ve been blogging for over 10 years. I first started on LiveJournal...yeah, remember those days? Then I took my relatable emo stories/experiences and moved over to Tumblr. When I took the jump to make a change in my life through fitness, I started #TeamKatia, along with a separate fitness Tumblr. There I chronicled my training, reposted "fitspiration" quotes, and occasionally shared a recipe. The response was welcoming and warm, though like anything we put online, not without the occasional negative comment. I have changed so much (mind, body, and spirit) since I decided to make a change, and start living a healthy life. So it only made sense to change the way I blog, share, and interact with people. Thus here we are. A brand new website, an entirely different outlook on life, a host of new friends and support.

There are thousands of Wellness, Fitness, and Lifestyle bloggers out there. I know because I follow them. Some are my friends who do it as their side hustle, others have successfully made it their full time job. I am inspired and empowered by them. One night I did that thing that we all shouldn't, but from time to time do: I compared myself to them. ​
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Comparing your authentic self, or your journey to anyone else will paralyze you.
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Same, Tay Tay, same. 

​On several occasions I found myself down the rabbit hole of comparison. Let me tell you where every rabbit hole led me to: paralyzing fear and a list of "what-ifs". I become so full of fear of not being on the same level, or caliber of others, that I allowed it to paralyze any success that I could have. 

How can we expect to succeed if we are allowing ourselves to let fear take the wheel?​
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Actual text exchange.

It was with one text message to my good friend Stacy, of Grace + Hudson (who is navigating building a brand and website, while staying true to her authentic self) that I realized it's okay to be plain avocado toast (PAT). Every successful person was once PAT. That blogger who is jet-setting around the world, has big name brands backing them, and 3.1k Instagram followers - they were once PAT. Even Oprah and Martha Stewart yes, they were slices of PAT.

Being PAT isn't a "bad" thing. Being PAT is your page one. It means this is where you are right now. You are ripe in your life, and ideas. No two pieces of PAT are alike, or have the same journey. Right now I am proud to be PAT. This is where I am today. My journey will move forward, upward, backwards, and be filled with questions. I have so much time to grow and add other ingredients onto my PAT, that I can't allow myself to be bogged down, and overthink something that I am not. Think about how many slices of PAT you've had in your life. Maybe you made it, maybe it was overpriced at a place in SOHO. My point is, each experience with avocado toast is something new. Something authentic.

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Plain Avocado Toast: A Recipe 

Ingredients:
1 beautiful soul happily ripe in their life
1 heap of confidence
1 platform (social media, text messages, IRL conversations) 
a huge dash of sincerity
a sprinkle of love and light
Directions:
Take the first two ingredients and mash together. Spread across your platform, while adding the last two ingredients. Smile. 
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*grammatical note: purposely used "it me" because I'm a "Millennial" and it's a meme we use. Try not to let it shiver your grammatical timbers. "it me" is a lot better than when we used to say, "me IRL".
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