It’s the icebreaker most of us would rather not participate in. If you’re anything like me you’re shy, quiet, and reserved. Growing up, public speaking scared me. Infact, it still does to this day. The icebreaker is typically along the lines of what’s your name, where are you from, and a cool fact about yourself. Well, I’m Stassney Brown, I’m from all over Texas, and a cool fact about myself is that I’m vegetarian. However, I find that you don’t ever get to know a person by this particular icebreaker. Do you know why I am from all over Texas? Or what I have gained from living all over Texas? Or what influenced me to go vegetarian? These are the types of questions that allow you to truly get to know someone. There is no opening up and learning something extraordinary about someone with the traditional icebreaker activity. I’m here to spice up the traditional icebreaker and serve the true Stassney. I want to dive deeper into myself and share my life with you all. So this time, I’m excited for the icebreaker. I’m pumped to introduce myself as Simply Stass.
Ever since I was a little girl, I enjoyed writing. Writing was always an escape for me. I would write poems about my life and about stories that I had heard from others. I would write short stories, plays, and journals. You name it, I probably wrote it. Writing was always a way that I could express myself. Oftentimes, I struggle to express my emotions out loud. Sometimes I write them down and they make sense to myself and others. Writing is something I have been using my whole life to inspire and better understand myself. Blogging has been something that interested me since I joined the internet in fourth grade. My goal with this blog is to continue to better understand myself, but most importantly inspire others.
College continues to challenge me mentally, physically, and emotionally. All throughout college I told myself and others that I wanted to be a physical therapist. As time went on, I started to realize that’s not what I was extremely passionate about. Just as any other college student would, I started to freak out. I looked into the student athletic training program. I was a student athletic trainer for about a year. I realized very quickly it was not my passion. I knew what my passion was though. It became obvious to me that I was shoving my dreams down the drain because of fear. I had a fear of never making it. I had a fear of letting my family down. I had a fear of judgment. As a kinesiology major, I felt stuck. I knew my true passions rested in something that doesn’t exactly have a “major” or a “minor”. I knew I liked creating on social media, photography, traveling, trying new things, fashion, working out, make up, and many more things. I knew to be truly happy I would get to share my love for these things with people. There is no cookie cutter major or path to embark on to pursue a life that I want to live. It took me a semester before graduating to realize this. I finally realized that I needed to be myself. I needed to stop trying to live up to other people’s standards and expectations. I needed to focus on me and what I wanted. I couldn’t focus on pleasing others. I needed to focus on pleasing myself. I desperately needed to do something for myself. So, I did.
I created this blog to pursue my passion, which is to share love and inspire. I hope that I inspire at least one person to follow their dreams and live for themselves. I hope I inspire someone to stop living someone else's dream because they feel pressured. I hope I inspire someone to be different. I want to inspire you to be simply you, just as I am Simply Stass.