THE BASICS
Name: Brianna R.
Age: 23 years old
Life’s Anthem: Sleeping sickness by City and Colours
Extrovert, weird, fun
Would eat chicken thighs for the rest of her life
Loves dinosaurs
BRI’S LIST OF COOL STUFF TO CHECK OUT
- Circles by Post Malone
- Ariana Grande
- Jurassic Park
Breathe. Just breathe. I tell myself that all the time. Nothing is ever permanent.
Bri on an advice you give yourself and others
THEIR STORIES
What is your happiest memory?
Aw, that’s a good one. When I went to Ponce de Leon with all of my friends. That was a really good time in life.
If you could relive any moment of your life, which would it be?
Shoot, the whole year when I was 19. I’d relive that all over again. Being 19 was the best, just every aspect of it. I was carefree, I didn’t have all of these responsibilities, I didn’t have an image to maintain, I dated whoever I wanted to without repercussions. I didn’t care about being involved with someone for a long term. It was all for a good time, never a long time.
A lot of what caused me to think that it was so care free was because I didn’t have enough respect for myself. I have to be responsible for my health because I let that be affected. Just feeling powerful, I felt like I was untouchable at 19.
What is something you feel guilty about?
Selfishness.There are times when I let my selfishness affect other people and their feelings and I feel really guilty about that sometimes. That keeps me up at night, thinking about how selfish I was in the past and disregarding other peoples emotions for the sake of my own. I borderlined home wrecked, it always bothers me. I never wanted to feel associated with that term and I ended up doing that anyways and it still makes me feel so cruddy when I think about it.
PERSPECTIVES AND IDEAS
What do you have trouble forgiving yourself for?
Not being a fast learner. I beat myself up a lot for not being able to learn quickly.
How would you define failure for yourself?
Not achieving a goal that I set for myself.
What do you think happens after death?
I’d like to think there’s a heaven and a hell and I just hope that I go to the heaven.
Do you think that your beliefs in a heaven affects how you live?
No, I know that in my beliefs, it’s impossible to be sin free so I can’t go around my entire life thinking that I have to not make a sin. I can go around and make mistakes and it’s OK as long as I hold myself accountable and do better. (audio)
How has your perspective on the world change over time?
A lot of people really don’t care. People don’t care what your struggles are and they will tear you up and eat you if you show any signs of weakness or vulnerability. You have to be really careful who you are vulnerable around. I feel like I’ve had to learn the hard way who to trust, who not to trust. The world is cruel to you if you allow yourself to be vulnerable all the time. (audio)
What do you think the goal of humannity should be then?
To take care of the Earth. Inhabit the Earth in a way that it doesn’t destroy the rest of it. We could live amongst the natural Earth and the animals and the wild life and not destroy it.
BRI’S BITS OF WISDOM
What did your last/worst break up teach you?
Don’t rush things and speak up if you feel a type of way. Trust your intuituions.
What advice or words of encouragement would you give yourself/others?
Breathe. Just breathe. Everything is temporary. I tell myself that all the time. Nothing is ever permanent. Kind of going back to what we were talking about: feeling stuck. I try to remind myself that it doesn’t have to be that way forever and it’s just right now that I feel stuck. I felt stuck when I was at my parents house and I thought I wasn’t gonna go anywhere. Now I’m here, I thought I was going to feel so satisfied being here. To a degree I do but now I just feel stuck because I’m like I could be doing something else. Unfortunately social media has a lot of influence in that because I see all these people living all these glamorous lives that I want to live and I just have to remind myself that things are temporary I can get there eventually. Have patience.
What is one thing that is so life changing you think everyone should experience it once in their life?
Being promiscuous. In all honesty, If you want to preserve yourself cool but if you are going to explore yourself sexually I think that is something you need to experience. You learn a lot about yourself sexually and mentally. You can learn about boundaries, what you’re comfortable with, what you’re not comfortable with. There’s positive things in sex that people kind of disregard. I’ve learned a lot about myself, unfortunately, through sex. It was a good way to learn about myself. I probably could’ve said something more morally okay, but whatever.
What do you think people should stop/start doing to make the world a better place?
Judging. I feel like we’re all way too judgemental. You can’t do anything without being judged. A 5 second video of someone doing something, they can determine who you are based off that 5 seconds. That’s only one aspect of you. There’s a phrase “first impressions are everything” and it sucks because you never get that chance to make up first impressions. Why are we basing everything so harshly off on first impressions? Maybe if I was having a bad day that day and I was serving a table and I was just in a bad mood, that doesn’t mean I’m in a bad mood all the time and that’s who I am. I just happen to be in a bad mood that day but these people are going to be convinced that I’m a terrible server just because of that bad day. I feel like if the world wasn’t so harsh there wouldn’t be so many conflicts. The judging just has to stop.
We have a lot of commonalities with one another. We all breathe the same air, we all bleed, the regular stuff that we all do. We all feel similar feelings at one point in our life. I’m sure even the richest people feel stuck. I’m sure everyone feels depressed at one point, sad, happy, they feel empowered, enlightened. Everyone goes through these similar emotions every now and then. Even if we do feel that way, we still judge everyone harshly for it.
REFLECTIONS
Brianna’s interview was the first in the audio series. There was a lot of figuring some things out and I was nervous about the how people may be influenced by being recorded. I kept asking her “Are you sure you don’t mind if people know about that?”. Afterwards, I reflected a lot about the possible consequences of publishing as a podcast.
I was pleasently surprised by how open she was with her answers. Me and Bri have been friends for almost 10 years and I’ve been through many of the stories she referenced to. I remember sitting in the parking lot after work talking about the home wrecking situaton. At the time, it was embarassing and messy. Hearing her talk about the situation from the perspective she has now relfects a lot of growth.
From Bri’s answers, I think the biggest reflection of thoughts I have is how important it is to learn from your past. She adviced everyone to be promiscuous and explore themselves in the sexual aspect even though one of her biggest guilt has come from a situation because of it. As humans in general, we don’t often understand what something truly means or feel until we experience it. Sometimes it has unfortunate consequences but as long we learn value from it then life usually will go on.
Her acceptance of the fact that human beings naturally make ‘sins’ was refreshing to me. There is a very fine line between knowing that we cannot avoid making mistakes and using it as an excuse. Some people may take the idea too far and disregard what the consequences of their actions may inflict on themselves and others. I think that one of the advanatges of being aware of this concept is so that we are able to be considerate of those consequences before they happen. Moral judgements are one of the ideas that fascinates me mainly because there’s no definite answer. It’s abstract and different for everyone. It will be a topic I would like to explore more through this series.
As stated above, I reflected a lot on the possible consequences after Bri’s interview. I kept asking her if she’s sure of her answers and that some people will hear it, assume things and may paint her in a bad light. But I took a step back and realized that it’s important to break those social boundaries. We had a good discussion about people judging and how easily we do it. It’s because of those judgements that people are scared to be open with the world. People will take one aspect of you and judge your ENTIRE life, morals and worth off of that. We admitted to our own hypocrisy and what we can do to be better and stop judging others so much. We both agreed to be more self aware with ourselves and call ourselves and each other out when we are being hypocritical. Admitting to one’s mistakes or bad habits is the first step in solving it.
Some of the answers above have been praphrased very slightly to remove excessive rambles in order to provide a smoother read. If you’d like to hear their unedited responses, you can do so by listening to their audio tapes linked at the end of each answers. If you’d like to listen to all audio tapes, you can do so by clicking here. Links will redirect you to instagram reels in another tab.
ALVENTURED 