Today I am grateful for messing up.  I missed posting yesterday.  I feel like there was something in the air that brought me to that moment—perhaps that I’d put it out to the universe myself.  I love my writing but this has been a challenge to keep up with over the last few months.  There have been so many times I just wanted to stop and focus on something else, so many times I questioned if this little piece of work was worth the stress of keeping up that posting streak. I knew I wasn’t doing it all the justice it deserved by forcing myself to post every day just for the sake of posting.  Some of my pieces weren’t my best, they barely made sense even to me.  But I was more worried about keeping my streak going than I was about quality content.  I’d mentioned the other day I’d thought about what would happen if I just decided to stop for a while because I knew I needed a break and I knew I needed time to create a better thought out piece of work..  I got distracted yesterday and truly thought I’d had that post scheduled.  When I logged in today, I saw that I never scheduled the piece.  It was done, just not scheduled. 

Today I am grateful for boundaries.  Forgetting to post yesterday forced me to take some time to really categorize and focus on what’s important.  Normally I give in to every little distraction while I’m working because I want to get the distraction out of the way.  What that’s really telling the universe is that I’m prioritizing anything that crosses my path over what I’ve been saying I really want to do.  Because I forgot to schedule a few things, I needed to ignore the distraction of the animals and even my husband and son. And it was ok to do that.  I don’t ignore the needs of those I love often or lightly but this was a scenario where productive thought needed to be tackled in that moment and doing so, doing the work when I was inspired and ready to do the work, made it flow so much easier than stopping in the middle of it and then trying to pick back up again.  It’s ok to do the work that needs to be done even if it doesn’t make sense to others.  There are always ways to figure it out—and no one died for having to wait an extra 30 minutes for some attention.

Today I am grateful for boundaries.  A continuation on the boundaries mentioned above but from a different angle.  With my career change from last June, it’s been easy to get distracted and fall in the trap of working nearly 24/7.  When I’m on call I do in fact work 24/7 for a week straight.  I work from home now so I’m ALWAYS connected to the job.  Sure, in these past 8 months I’ve learned what actually needs to be prioritized (it was so easy in the beginning to think everything was an emergency) but it’s also as easy to fall into the habit of, “This will only take a minute, just get it done.”  So, fully aware I did it to myself, and fully knowing I needed to stop and take some time off (I’ve got nearly 5 weeks of vacation from my previous role and my transition into this one), I knew it was time for a day off.  I had a doctor’s appointment so I put in for the entire day off on Friday.  One day didn’t change everything for me, but it showed me that maintaining boundaries around my time and taking the time to clearly focus on something else that needed addressing is crucial.  I’d been pushing and pushing and persisting and exhausting myself to get it all done and thinking I had no reason to complain about being tired because I have all the time in the world to do what I need to do—but no one is designed to be “on” 24/7/365.  So, recognizing I’m not super woman nor is that the expectation because I work from home helped.  I am able to work from home because I’m expected to have a different availability than other people—that doesn’t mean I’m expected to work 24/7/365.  We all need to recharge and I’m allowed to do what’s necessary to do just that.

Today I am grateful for fun.  Ok, this isn’t new and I’ve talked about the importance of taking time for fun a lot but there are moments (like what I mentioned in the boundaries section above) where fun is the last thing on my mind or I feel like I’m supposed to be “on” all the time.  My heart has been crying for fun for a long time.  Like, I have this vision of such a balanced life with work, play, my own projects, a clean house, a loving family, vacations, work that means something to me and supports us, etc. etc. but I put so much focus on my job to prove I’ve earned my time off, to prove to those around me that I work too, that I lost sight of how to even have fun.  Even the nights I’d be in the basement with my husband trying to play a game of pool or darts, I’d been entirely distracted by something else or I’d take the game itself so seriously (like having to do it well to prove I’m a worthy partner or some crap like that) that I still wouldn’t be able to have fun.  I WASN’T having fun.  So we went the full opposite this weekend.  We went shopping (and probably spent more than we should have) but it was for things we always wanted but never took the time to bring into the house.  It was for experiences together as a family that we normally don’t do.  It felt amazing.  The point is if we are going to play, we need to play.  It isn’t about the result of the play in terms of who wins/loses—it’s about letting go of the result and taking the time to bond. And on top of all that, today is the Super Bowl and we love watching football so we’re taking the time to enjoy the game together as a family (from home, of course 😊).

Today I am grateful for cleansing.  There had been such a negative energy around me that, as I mentioned in the play section above, I couldn’t even let go just to have a good time.  The play never felt fulfilling and it felt like more and more of a waste of time as we tried to do it nightly.  We’d scheduled the time together to do something different, to get off our butts from watching TV and to actually do something together—something we’d wanted to do together for a long time which is why my husband had worked on rebuilding that pool table in the first place.  I digress.  The energy surrounding the house and ourselves was thick and painful.  Always heavy and difficult to walk through and it was so heavy that it made even the things we WANTED to be doing unnecessarily challenging and painful.  So I took the time to sage ourselves and the entire house last night and it was amazing.  There’s still some stuck energy here so I want to go through and physically clean the house as well, but cleansing was the start of something amazing for us.  I could feel the attachment to being angry and resentful because I didn’t feel like the “play” was worth anything more than a waste of time.  So, cleansing to detach from the stigma of play and work, to clear the stagnation from all that negativity of the last year, to create a clean and safe place for my family and I to enjoy our time together felt amazing.  We still have work to do, but it feels like an amazing start.  We will keep going and removing the pieces that hold us back until we find where we’re supposed to be—and I know we are getting there. Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.         

We’re often asked as children what we want to be when we grow up.  I don’t know about any of you but when people asked me that, it always felt like they were somehow playing, like they wanted to play on the fanciful mind of a child, like there was no real vision or intent in the ideals or mind of a child.  I remember feeling like I had to play into that view of who the adults thought I was at the time and say things like, “I’m going to be a teacher” or “I’m going to be an astronaut.”  I never felt like there was any real curiosity on how I felt.  I also never really learned to connect with those pieces of me that would have told me what I wanted.  Maybe some of the other kids my age knew what they wanted and it was just me who felt like I had to say what was expected, maybe some kids found their way later in life.  Perhaps the question was genuine and this is how adults wanted to learn how to guide kids.  But the problem with asking kids what they want to be at a young age is twofold: we either create a stigma where kids feel like they have to commit to what they say or we don’t take into account that kids are fickle and change their minds.  I don’t know why we’re so obsessed as a society with defining people as early and often as possible.  The truth is simple: We’re allowed to outgrow the version of ourselves that we thought we’d become.

Humans are ever evolving, ever changing, ever expanding creatures and, while we like to categorize and label things as soon as we can, it isn’t always the most practical thing—or the most honest.  We are not one thing.  On top of that we train ourselves to ignore all the little moments thinking it’s only the big moments that matter.  Like all this life happens in between these milestones—the milestone is great but it took all of that in between to get there—that’s an entire existence.  The truth is, most humans live multiple versions of themselves—our lives are a constant rebirth from one version to the next.  Who we are one minute isn’t necessarily who we are the next and instead of running from identity to identity or torching everything we were to the ground, we need to integrate all those pieces that resonate with who we are and let the rest go.  We are all those things.  And I want to emphasize that our life isn’t quantified or qualified by how big we get, how big our house or bank account is, or by the size of the vision—our life is determined by how well we live.  The same dream and goals don’t apply to everyone and we don’t all need to have our names written on the screens when we are already made of stars.  It’s also ok to play our little part in something big because this life is big enough.

So perhaps that is the point I’ve been trying to make for years, in piece after piece I’ve written: that we are enough.  The insane pressure of consumerism, of capitalism, of whatever-the-hell-we-have-to-haveism is too much.  There have been so many advances in this world since the dawn of time that we are likely closer to the imagined science fiction than we are to what time was like back then.  There is a lot to see, a lot to do, a lot of possibility and opportunity in this world so I find it really disappointing that, for the sake of making other people comfortable with who we are and to allow the world to somehow keep track of us, we need to define ourselves in a way that makes people happy.  And what if they don’t agree with it?  I say who the hell cares.  This life could literally be taken away fro many of us at any moment so why are we so concerned with making people perceive us a certain way?  Especially when the human mind perceives experientially anyway?  I don’t care what my kid wants to be 30 years from now.  I’m not saying to not have a goal—and for those kids who DO know definitively what they want, that’s great—however, that goal needs to be kept in context of LIFE, not life.  LIFE is all the things we ever want to do, to create, and explore, and as cute as it is to hear that 5 year old talk about how they’re going to be a CEO one day, they won’t know that until they’re older.  Let life happen, be honest, and don’t be afraid to be whatever part you’re meant to be. It isn’t always what we thought it would be–and that’s fine.    

People run for different reasons—exercise, competition, creativity, to win, to get somewhere, to leave somewhere.  There are a lot of reasons to run and a lot of ways to run as well.  We take things head on or we avoid them, and if we’re honest, we can see we’ve all done it.  Whether it’s something we can’t stop talking about or something we never bring up, we’re running in a specific direction and running means we’re anywhere but where we are in the moment.  We can’t escape the moment no matter how uncomfortable. Thinking you can escape life is the problem—we can never escape life.  Life is all the moments that happen when we’re working toward something and we can’t get to where we’re going without being in the moments happening right now. 

Transition and transformation are far from simple things—even though some changes are easier than others.  The act of taking away what once was and building something new takes a lot and sometimes it’s a matter of building something only we can see.  Avoiding what it takes to get there will never get us there.  Change is messy and chaotic and even ugly at times but avoiding the work required delays the results—and those results have a way of finding us regardless of what we do.  Change is about persistence and perseverance as well as purpose and passion.  Sometimes the pieces of our past need to be dealt with to pave the way for the future we’ve been envisioning. 

Sometimes when we least expect it we become exactly what we were trying to be.   Suddenly we wake up and we’ve transformed into the life we always wanted.  The things we struggled with make sense.  The routine shifts and what seemed daunting is effortless.  There are no more tests, we’ve stopped running and we embrace the life we live.  As hard as it may be, I want to add that sometimes it takes a loss to remind us of what we always were.  The things that no longer serve, the job that falls apart, the doors that seem to stay closed no matter how hard we push—all those things guide us to what we want.  More importantly, they guide us to what we need to get what we want.  So all of this is to say that we need to stop running—we may think we’re running for our health but we’ve been avoiding the truth.  We need to slow down to see where we’re at.  And sometimes where we’re at is exactly where we need to be.   

None of us are defined by one thing.  Sure there’s an overarching theme where we can kind of get the general idea of who someone is, but there are so many pieces to what makes a person.  With that being said, sometimes there are facets of who we are that don’t quite seem to fit together or we aren’t sure how to make them fit together.  Like we have this calling toward things that may seem polar opposites but we feel pulled to them.  Sometimes it takes a bit more work to flip the pieces or move them in a new direction, but rest assured that if the pieces fall to us, we are meant to put them together to create the full picture of our lives. I received this reminder while watching a behind the scenes of a vlog we watch regularly, and it was a perfect example of how we can merge multiple things together and it just works.  This business was a mix of Japanese, BBQ, Coffee, and a Grocery/Restaurant.  My initial reaction was along the lines that it was too much, they were trying to put too much together and it was such an obscure mix of things that didn’t seem to make sense, even to me.  But the more I watched, the more I saw that owner is making it work with putting all of that together.  Sometimes unrelated things that don’t seem to make sense on paper actually work in real life.  This was a great reminder to keep working on finding how those pieces fit together because there’s a way.  It isn’t always obvious but keep shuffling the pieces and eventually we’ll see the whole thing.

Continuing on our discussion of light and life that comes from the rubble of certain experiences, I had a moment when I realized it wasn’t until things really started to fall apart that I understood there were things that needed to change.  Like, I didn’t know what needed to change until it started to change.  I’ve been working on the ever-evolving process of self-development and embracing who I am so I always thought I had a good grasp on what needed to be done even if I wasn’t doing it perfectly. In looking back there were signs that I wasn’t always on the right track/what I was doing wasn’t working.  I mean, every time I faced a trigger I was aware of, the automatic response was the same as it always had been, the same stories running through my mind all the time.  That should have been a cue that things weren’t working out as I had planned and perhaps needed to try another way.  But then things really took a turn.  Like, I started losing people again.  People around me got sick. Mental health in those I love took a severe decline, my mental health took a decline. I saw a future without specific elements in my life and my heart broke. I felt overwhelmed and lost and confused and alone.  Those moments when there was so much that needed to be done that I didn’t know where to begin, all that overwhelm, I was ready to throw it all away because the pressure felt too great. 

Then I heard this song reminding me that sometimes the answer isn’t throwing it all away, it’s finding the pieces that were hidden behind the façade we built.  Some walls hold up the structure and others hide things, even if we don’t intend for that.  Sometimes we thought we were protecting something and we build a wall we never intended to exist and we end up building an entire life on something that can’t hold up.  When those walls start to fall, when we stand the initial rubble, it feels even more chaotic and lost.  Sure, it feels like we’re losing something and it can be painful, but it wasn’t meant to exist like that in the first place.  Seeing all the underlying cracks and recognizing what had already fallen apart was terrifying because it shone a spotlight on all I knew could still fall apart, on all I could still lose.  I needed to focus on what had potential to be built.  To say that there was a point and a time where it made sense to live a certain way and now it was over didn’t mean that we weren’t supposed to be that way at that time and it doesn’t mean we aren’t supposed to live how we are now.  It doesn’t mean we’ve done anything wrong when we get to a point where we have nowhere else to go but through.  It’s finding the pieces that shine within the rubble.  This house isn’t necessarily falling apart but there is something missing.  The light and the life. 

Seeing what I loved fall apart, my husband’s health, the house with the cracks in the ceiling.  Like every move we make is just taking it closer to breaking brought about every old fear I had about losing the people I love, the same fear I’ve had since I was a child, losing all the people who cared most about me.  I couldn’t think straight–  Maybe this is one of those moments I’ve spoken of where it’s meant to break.  Perhaps this isn’t something I’m meant to fix.  Perhaps all the chaos is just a signal letting us know we need to do something different, that something is at its end even if it didn’t turn out how we wanted it to. The truth is there are certain facets of life that we simply have no control over and not everything turns out how we thought it would.  What we thought was amazing turns out to be crap for lack of a better word.  What once was shiny is dull and cracked, what once held light is now a black hole, sucking our energy trying to bring us with it.  There comes a point where we have to realize that making the outside look pretty doesn’t change a damn thing going on inside and it is falling apart.  If the studs are breaking it doesn’t matter what color you paint the walls.  So when the body is screaming that something doesn’t fit, listen.  If something isn’t working anymore, pay attention.  The things in our lives are meant to fit us and our needs—we aren’t meant to conform.  So find our space in this world, allow what needs to fall apart to do so with dignity and grace and look for the light that comes with it. 

Late morning sun flooded through the windows bringing some much needed light into the cold grey room, lighting up my ceiling and walls and floor.  I’d been in a moment of fixation so my eye scrutinized the room more than normal, feeling lost in my head, unsure what I was even doing in that moment, and then my gaze really stuck on a particular part of the room where the light reflected brightest.  My heart caught as I saw new cracks on the ceiling from the continued settling of the house through the freezing, brutal winter.  A surge of absolute desperation, anger, frustration, and helplessness flowed through me and I screamed to no one that I didn’t want to live here any longer.  That feeling encompassed what seemed the ever growing truth that there was no point in continuing to try and make something work that clearly didn’t.  No matter what we tried to do there were always new cracks and they were getting bigger and bigger, harder to maintain, harder to fix.  We’ve been in this home for 5 years and it is only about 13 years old so we’d expected some of the issues we’ve had and we’ve done some improvements but it seemed the life I envisioned for us here wasn’t happening.  Seeing those new cracks felt like the last bit of hope I had after a terrible season were ripped away, a reminder that there were still issues underlying the pretty façade we’ve built.  I’d made it through a tough time only to have it thrown right back in my face.  I was ready to throw it all away in that instant.  There was no motivation or hope in that moment to put anything else/any other energy into what we had around us.

I really started to think about it because I’ve habitually held onto things that have no hope because I’ve desperately wanted it all to work out, to feel some sense of security in it working out—in short, codependence on what is familiar.  What good was that doing?  Every time something else pops up, it’s exhausting.   It doesn’t feel like an opportunity to pivot, it feels like another drain on my energy.  So if all of this energy to make things look and feel a certain way was falling apart, if it didn’t turn out how I thought it would, why keep going?  There could be another way:  Instead of the struggle to keep things from breaking and tearing myself apart in the process, what would I be willing to let fall apart?  Stop thinking the energy spent keeping things together is worth more than letting it die in its time.   If something is determined to break, there is nothing we can do to stop it and we can either spend our entire lives trying to stop that freight train or we can jump off to preserve what we have now.  For me, it’s preserving that time with family and establishing my own career, my own legacy doing what I want to do—no one will ensure I get the life I want to for myself but myself.  Building a house on sand is dangerous and covering up all the cracks with more mud will eventually create a mound of crap instead of a sturdy foundation.  We need to discern between the moment we need to keep patching and the moment we need to do a complete tear down.       

That moment of desperation, of wanting to destroy everything, was the culmination of losing the people and things that gave me any sense of security—from my parent’s health issues, to adjusting an on call schedule at my 9-5, to my husband’s unexpected health issues, to the loss of long time family friends—now my very home seemed to be turning against me.  The universe is determined and offers painful, albeit true/necessary lessons in life including the fact that if we are staying stuck, the universe will find a way to make us move including removing what felt like security.  Sometimes we need to move faster, we need to move through uncomfortable crap, and sometimes we need to let go of what we thought we wanted in order to find what we need.  Not that we have to throw it away or destroy it but we can’t fight the inevitable.  As fate would have it, I heard a line in a show that said “In the ruins, it’s more alive and beautiful because of what it’s been through.”  We can’t tailor our lives to make other people happy, we don’t need to throw it all away when it gets tough.  Sometimes it’s about finding the pieces that shine within the rubble.  The house isn’t falling apart but there is something missing and those cracks are showing me what needs to be put back together.  The house needs light and life and joy.  It doesn’t need to be demolished and we may need to admit that this isn’t the place for us, but it isn’t time to throw away anything we’ve built.  Sure, at some point we may move on from this place and start somewhere new—that’s life.  Sometimes we see the potential in those cracks, the new life rising from the ashes—and sometimes we have to remember that a crack doesn’t necessarily mean the end, it’s where the life comes in.  The cracks show we’ve lived—or remind us that we have more living to do, because life can be born of those cracks.                     

Today I am grateful for the opportunity to learn my own rhythms.  I was so stuck on a specific pattern, a specific way of working that I’d get lost in what needed to be done, trying to force specific things at specific times.  Like, work was only between x and y time, shopping was done on that day of the week, sleep was at this time etc. etc.  In my new role, I’d get frustrated at first responding to certain things outside of work hours until I had a real conversation with my boss and understood that we aren’t obligated to be attached to the computer 24/7 and that we are allowed to get things done for our personal life during work hours if we need to work on some work things on a not-so-standard time.  I don’t know why it took so long for that to click for me because it’s what I’ve wanted for years now.  I looked at the available time from no longer commuting as the opportunity when the reality is, my entire day, every day has been opened up by looking at my 24 hours differently.  I can answer my body with what it needs when it needs it.  It’s fine to step away and take care of an appointment, it’s ok to step away and bring your kid to school, it’s fine to respond to an email super early and check on it later in the day—not everything needs our immediate response. Not being attached to our phones doesn’t mean we’re unprofessional—it means we value life.  I’ve been reminded a lot of enhancing the value of life through prioritizing life.  That means flowing with our own rhythm, following our own beat.

Today I am grateful for a reminder to relish the time we have.  We lost a long time family friend a few weeks ago and, as with any loss, there’s a hole when someone important is taken from us.  In sharing our stories, we all came to the conclusion that this person never once seemed sad or mad about anything. Ever.  In my time with them (which was nearly my entire life) I don’t think I ever saw him without a smile and a laugh.  What really hit with this loss was the fact that we, now more than ever, need to be present with those we love.  We need to take the time we have with those we love.  This morning I knew I had work to do since I’m behind on a few things for a couple of different projects so my anxiety was already high while I was just waking up.  I normally would have slipped out of bed and just started working but my husband wasn’t feeling well and he pulled me back into bed with him and just held me close.  It hit me in that moment, thinking of the loss we’re dealing with, all the change we’re dealing with, the changes in our lives as we’re getting older, that this is the only moment we have.  I don’t want to look back and wish I had taken more time to lay in bed with my husband when I had all the time in the world to do so but I opted not to because of other work I needed to do.  So instead of rushing to get up and get going, I stayed in bed for a few more minutes and appreciated our time together.  Nothing else matters but the time we have together now.

Today I am grateful for trying new things.  Getting in a new groove and finding something that works takes time and it takes experimentation and openness and curiosity.  It means finally putting down any story we’ve told ourselves and stepping into something new.  I’m not delusional about where I’m at in life but at the same time I feel like I’m not here—I feel younger than I am and I’ve portrayed myself as younger than I am, allowing distraction to take precedence over priority, allowing my emotions to run the show.  Sometimes that emotion is shrouded in a layer of insecurity and fear so deep that we don’t even know it’s fear or insecurity.  But something clicks and we realize that we have all the time in the world once we put away all that crap, all the things we use to take away from the life we want.  Even it it’s as simple as buying new makeup or talking about things we haven’t before as a couple or trying to learn new things/improve on things we currently have in our lives or things we enjoy.  We’re older now, things ARE different.  We aren’t meant to be doing the same things we were as kids/teenagers if that isn’t who we are.  The dreams of what things were, where they are somewhat familiar and we’re in a spot we know but that isn’t quite the same, that’s what it feels like and that’s when it’s time to step out and stop repeating the cycle.  Just do it.    

Today I am grateful for the real relationships in my life.  For such intelligent creatures we tend to be pretty stupid about our relationships—well, I know I was.  We’ve all made mistakes about trusting the wrong people or we’ve tried to impress the wrong people or we’ve prioritized the wrong people—and we’ve all made fools of ourselves at some point.  There are people who stick with us no matter what and I am beyond grateful for those who have stuck with me.  I grew up with a very strong sense of loyalty—those people who took care of us, those who stood by us, those who helped us were the ones we took care of and there was nothing we wouldn’t do for those people.  I was reminded of that two-fold yesterday.  I received a text at random from my best friend that she loved me and she appreciates me, which, while I KNOW she loves and appreciates me, is not something she says often if we aren’t in the middle of a call.  I’ve been friends with her for 36/37 years now so I’m well aware of how she feels, that isn’t the point, I just know how she expresses herself and that isn’t the way she normally does it—she even said so herself.  Regardless, reading her message meant the world to me and it was a special moment to have her open up like that.  This is a person who I’m with until the end, and I’ve always been over the top with sharing my emotions like that, so it meant a lot to have her express hers as well.  The difference in my relationship with her and the people I considered friends is VAST.  The same is said for her and the people she thought were friends as well.  I hate being so far from her, and because we know each other so well, we didn’t spend a lot of time talking with each other daily/weekly for a long time and we’ve since made the choice we need to spend more time talking and that has changed everything and made us even stronger together.  I am grateful to have someone like that with me.    

Today I am grateful for strengthening my relationship with my husband.  These last few months have been a roller coaster with him because of some of the health challenges he’s been facing.  We’re dealing with middle-age, family history, the habits around not being fully open about what’s happening, fears of life and death, and what it means to be in a relationship.  My husband has always been the type of person to do what he pleases when he pleases—I don’t need to get into too much of that history but it had a lot to do with upbringing and not wanting to be controlled and a gross example of what it meant to be in a relationship.  On top of that type of upbringing/understanding, we’ve never been this age before so we weren’t entirely sure what we were dealing with or how to behave with each other.  The other night we had a long conversation about our insecurities—the first time he’s ever admitted anything about being insecure and my first time pin pointing what caused me to be insecure as well.  We didn’t dismiss each other’s fears, we simply talked through them and we actually spent the time to reassure each other that the things we each felt insecure about were of no consequence/bother to the other.  Like, the things we worry about don’t bother the other at all.  We just want to be together.  So we can simply be together.  Relationships change over time because we change and that is simply the way of life—and it’s fine.  As long as we know we’re in it together, that’s all that matters, and now, I feel, like we are 100% on the same page about that.  I’m grateful because this is an opportunity to develop what really matters to us, to really create something together.  Put aside the crap about who is controlling whom and simply be together and do the things we wanted to.     

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.

January is already in the books if you can believe it. How are we doing since the mid-month check in?  Still on the up and up?  Have we picked ourselves up by the bootstraps? There is still some residual energy from last year if I’m entirely honest.  We’ve spoken about it enough that we know change doesn’t happen overnight but in the spirit of transparency, it feels like there just might be some universal confluence testing us all at the moment to see what we really want, to see if we’re really committed to what we say we want.  Whatever it is, there are patterns I know we are all still working to break and I want to let everyone know that’s perfectly normal.  Even with one month in the books there is still plenty of time to do what we need to do.  I want to pause and acknowledge that we always begin the year on a holiday high and coming back to reality is like coming down off a drug so it’s always disorienting to flip the switch.  We are also in the dead of winter, it’s been horrifically cold/snowy/grey for the last several weeks, we’ve been stuck inside, everything feels a little stuck and messy and we’re still trying to act like what’s happening outside doesn’t exist because life has to go on.  With that being said, there is another side to this reality that needs to be addressed.

Because of the latter issues mentioned above, t’s been daunting to get back on the health habit even though I know that’s a saving grace for me.  I’d allowed myself full indulgence (not working out, eating whatever I wanted, drinking again) at the end of the year/over the holidays because I was determined to focus more on being in the moment than worrying about my weight and I paid for it.  I’ve gained some weight back, I’m tired, I’m moody, and I’m feeling an overall heaviness/melancholy that sucked a lot of energy out of me.  There was the one-two punch of significant family changes on top of all that and I spiraled.  As of last week I said that was enough and I started to work out again.  It wasn’t easy and I had to start slowly again—so let that be a lesson to anyone that even a little time off from body care makes a difference, especially over 40.  I could have chosen to stick with the old habit of hating myself and worrying about time again and fearing everything (even though there is still some of that) but I chose to pick up the habit I’d fully committed to over the last two years and started taking care of me again.  Even if it feels good to take a break (and it is sometimes necessary), there is something incredibly rewarding about learning to reengage with ourselves as a reminder of what we can do.  This life is so short and things change in an instant so there really is no point in getting stuck on how we feel—we need to use that feeling to navigate to the next thing because life will not stop moving and neither can we.

January is literally my least favorite month—I’ve hated it for decades and it’s only gotten worse as I’ve gotten older so I’m well aware of what parts of this are simply old habit and which are the impetus to push through this time and not get buried under it.  That’s enough progress to stop getting hung up where I’m at.  It’s enough to encourage me to drop that old habit of feelings running the show thinking the universe is trying to keep me trapped and to pick up the habit of taking care of myself that took so long to curate.  Only one of those old habits is the way through.  I will repeat it as many times as necessary: we don’t get new results doing the same thing over and over again.  But in this moment, I will caveat/amend that statement to say that some old habits are worthy of repeating because the results were better for us—we just have to get out of the muck to know which ones matter.  Change will always come with a certain level of challenge—that doesn’t mean we back down, it doesn’t mean we’re failing, and it doesn’t mean we won’t ever get where we want to be.  It means we there are times we need to recognize when something isn’t working and we pivot or we see something isn’t working and we move on.  I will encourage us to remember once again that just because we are already a month into the year, if things haven’t magically turned around there’s still time.  It’s been a rough start but that doesn’t mean that once this weather lets up and warmth and light come back into our lives that things won’t grow from the choices we make right now. 

If our environment represents what is in our minds, there are days I feel I’m in trouble.  Dishes in the sink even if there’s room in the dishwasher.  Clothes and sheets clean but unfolded and sitting in piles waiting to be addressed.  Papers everywhere.  Piles to take out for recycling.  Toys and clothes strewn about my son’s room like he has no dresser or storage at all.  I know I’m not alone in this and some days are more overwhelming than others as far as the feelings of guilt and shame that come with seeing everything in total disarray.  It got me thinking that there is definitely some credence to the outside representing the inside.  Alas, we are human and need to give ourselves some grace.  There are different reasons for feeling upset about the chaos ranging from shame all the way to frustration that no one else seems to see their own clothes on the damn stairs.  And there are different reasons for the chaos in the first place.  We have a busy life, I do have multiple projects going at once, my kid is at an age where the floor might as well be his hamper, and some days we are just flat out tired.  And all of that is ok.  I want to take some of the pressure off us thinking we are a disaster just because we get a little behind in the housework or a little cluttered with a to-do list that never seems to end (pro tip, the to-do list will never end—it’s a constant shuffle of one priority over another). 

Instead of creating our own stigma that we are somehow messy in mind because our space is messy, we need to look at the root.  First of all, is it circumstantial?  IE was it a bad week etc.  Or are we feeling like the world is weighing us down and we can never get out from underneath it?  Both are messy but the reasons behind them tell us how to handle that mess.  So why is the mess an issue in the first place?  There is a thing called neuroaesthetics—wanting things to look nice and neat and orderly because it calms us, it reduces stress, makes us happier.  This is a scientific fact—when things are organized and put where they need to be, our lives feel a little less heavy.  I enjoy having a place for everything and when everything finds its place.  But here’s the thing: we can’t drive ourselves crazy making sure everything LOOKS good when we have other priorities.  If we have a nervous breakdown because we think we’re falling apart over not putting the clothes away, I’d personally not put the clothes away.  The world will not end because something doesn’t look perfect.  And here’s another pro-tip: I’ve seen the inside of many houses and nearly all of them are in some state that looks a lot like mine and I don’t care.  It hasn’t stopped me from going in their houses, it hasn’t stopped me from talking to people, and I never once thought anyone of those messy houses meant incompetent or unstable people.  We like it to look nice but evidence suggests there are stages in life where it just DOESN’T and that is ok. 

We are our own worst critic and we put pressure on ourselves every day in different ways.  How we want to look.  What we want to get done that day.  Whether or not that idea is going to work—because we need it to.  We agonize over what we said yesterday while planning what we want to say tomorrow, meanwhile we forgot to even put pants on.  No one cares as much about ourselves as we do.  The first thing we should focus on organizing and making look nice—no, making it FEEL nice—is our mind.  Make sure it’s a clean place where ideas can grow (I know, it’s cheesy) and that we can approach ourselves with any problem because we know we can handle it.  The nervous system calms right down when we understand we got it under control.  We see the issue clearly from that state and suddenly it’s just the garbage that needs to go out or the dishes just need to be done—it isn’t that we’re falling apart or failing at everyone.  I had to learn that not everyone lives like an HGTV show like some Martha Stewart where everything is perfect.  I genuinely believed that was the standard people lived by well into adulthood and I wasted a lot of time ashamed of how my house looked even to the point of not having people over.  Sure I still want things to be organized and neat and they will get there.  I often remind myself there will be a day I’m asking for the clutter to be back because I’m missing my son at this age.  Clearing the clutter takes time and so does restructuring messy thought patterns but as long as we do the work, no matter how long it takes, we’re making progress and that’s more important than how anything looks.              

Dr. Julia Kogan stated, “Quitting your job is not going to get you out of the endless cycle of exhaustion, overwhelm, and overthinking that we’ve been stuck in.  Not spending time with friends, letting go of responsibilities and commitments won’t get you out of that cycle either. We repeat cycles because of a build up of stress that causes a dysregulated nervous system whether from the past few years or from childhood; The nervous system drains the body’s resources, it takes your energy making it hard to go about our day.  We don’t want to let go and wind up in the same place because we’re doing the same thing our body knows how to do. We can’t get stuck in the idea that once we leave the job, the kids are gone etc. because that isn’t going to fix anything.”  The premise here is that upheaving our lives with the expectation that will resolve our issues doesn’t work.  We may need a big change, that’s true, but until we address the root cause of our dysregulation, we will repeat the same cycle no matter what we do or choose to change.  We’ve all been there, at the point where we’re so stressed we say “Fuck it,” and there’s nothing else we want to do.  We want to turn our backs on everything we know only to find ourselves right back where we started.  I made a huge shift in my career/life 6 months ago and I knew it was the right thing to do but I 100% was the same person I always have been in the beginning of that transition.  Sure, I knew conceptually what needed to be done and how to do it but I wasn’t that person yet.  Leaving the circumstance I was in didn’t change me–it changed my circumstances but I was still me and now I just felt overwhelmed about new stuff.  Prime example of carrying the same habits to a new situation.

It wasn’t until I learned where I needed to adapt that I understood where I needed to heal—and this couldn’t be where I thought I had to change, this had to be the root.  I had to be willing to dig and see what was actually holding me back.  I had the time I wanted, I had a role I’d wanted for a long time, but I was somehow still in the same place I’d been.  Sure, change doesn’t always happen over night, and that was a huge change for me.  But it wasn’t just a matter of having more freedom and a life away from the office.  It wasn’t just about having to adhere to what people told me and why I suddenly felt so averse to it.  All of this spiraled from a fractured relationship with time and lacking self-confidence.  I’d spent years begging for more time, complaining about the amount of time I spent commuting, the nights I’d have to stay long working on things that made no impact whatsoever on my long term goals, and now I had this abundance of time that I’d been begging for and it somehow still seemed to fill up with crap that made no difference.  I was looking for things to prove my worth on a new team, I was trying to find a way to be that person the team was happy with, to be the person learning a new role, all while learning a new way of life.  Learning how to incorporate the things I wanted to do with new obligations and new timelines, new expectations.  I had to give up what I wanted people to think of me for what I actually wanted to be.  I had to find the strength in myself to get really honest about the habits versus the actual responsibility.

**No one was breathing down my neck anymore with arbitrary and ever-changing demands and deadlines.  I didn’t have to spend 90% of my day dealing with staff who liked drama for the sake of liking drama.  I didn’t have to devote serious focused time and effort on a project only to be told it wasn’t the right thing/that someone else had already done it/my input wasn’t needed.  Yes, I still had a 9-5 but it was a 9-5 that I could set my schedule any way I wanted.  That 9-5 spans 24 hours and there’s a lot that can be done in 24 hours. **

So what was the real issue?  I had spent so much time keyed up trying to meet other people’s expectations because I was taught to prioritize everyone else’s stuff over my own that it felt like I had to sneak time in for what I wanted to do, like my life was what happened in the left over time from working on everyone else’s crap.  I felt guilty getting what I’d asked for.  So this was a case where I’d turned my life upside down for the right reasons, I just hadn’t oriented myself to where I needed to be.  The other issue was that I had a habit of being afraid to go it alone.  In a lifetime of mis-prioritization and resentment, I’d lost the ability to trust my instincts and just do the work I wanted to do, thinking I couldn’t do it on my own.  I could blame others for not achieving my goals that way.  I could clean up other people’s messes but I couldn’t face my own.  I couldn’t accept that my mistakes were to be expected as well, especially learning different facets of life, of who I am.  Especially while learning new skills and how to apply myself.  I had to accept that not everything would come as easily to me as it had before, that I may not know what I don’t know and that was totally NORMAL.  It wasn’t just about upheaval, it was about the strength to navigate that change and to be willing to trust I could figure it out.  This past Sunday I shared in my gratitude that I realized I had a certain level of clarity that brought me to the conclusion it’s time to do the work differently.  I said “instead of waiting for everyone to be on board, just start building the ship.”  That means learning to prioritize what I need to prioritize for my health/sanity as well as for my goals and dreams.  I could stop telling myself my goals take too long or it’s too hard or that the dishes have to be done a certain way at a certain time.  I had to stop telling myself we need everyone to see things exactly how we do before we get started.  Just start because it isn’t their responsibility to bring our vision to life anymore than it’s our responsibility to bring their vision to life.  The vision doesn’t necessarily begin how we think it looks—sometimes it takes a minute for people to catch up and when they do all the pieces click.  And sometimes moving forward is about proving to ourselves that we can do it.  That we have what it takes to get where we want to be.  So, we already  have the sketch in our minds, get it out in the world.