I have been quiet here in blog-land ... to the point where friends have been saying stuff like What's up with you and the blog? and You've been so quiet ... so sporadic; everything OK? And while, yes, I'm fine (all is well), I've also been simmering with some stuff that was not particularly blog-like, and at the end of the day I didn't have a lot of energy for playing here.
About six months ago I started noticing some patterns in my life, started digging around them and - a la the Talking Heads - found myself asking: Well, how did I get here?
Things being as they are, when you ask such question(s) sometimes you "live along some distant day into the answer," and so my life conspired - in a variety of ways - to deliver some answers.
The thing is, when you ask questions and start digging into your life, there's no guarantee that you'll like what is revealed (whether it's an answer or a clearer version of the next choices to take). And ain't it wild how you can know that things need to change and you want things to be different, but you want them to change the way you want them to? Easy, and with little effort? Growth without the aptly named growing pains? A miracle pill that delivers the epiphany without the hard part that comes after?
And wouldn't that be nice? But not this time. Nope, this time, it has become clear that it's not the water that's holding me down, but my insistence on paddling on, "same as it ever was" in spite of some evidence that it wasn't wise, and it wasn't getting me where I want to go. Y'see, even as I go about my life attempting to be intentional and mindful, trusting my intuition, making some bold and brave choices here and there, and thinking that I'm a pretty good person, I recently found myself unpleasantly face to face with a theme/pattern/way of being that shows that - while all those things can be true, there's stuff I do that's not so nice, not so mindful ... a harmonic convergence of a couple things all weaving together to make one damn interesting and challenging piece of life-fabric to get through.
I've been aware of these things in varying degrees for a long time (with thanks to my writing practice and all the evidence in the basement: boxes of journals with the variations on the theme[s] going back to my teens), but sometimes my own written evidence is not enough to move me (she of foot-dragging tendencies). Sometimes I guess things need to conspire to get me to see in a whole new way (those damn lifequakes). And damned if the universe didn't deliver this time.
So yes, I've known for a while that things were off and I needed to make changes, but part of me loves the stuff that keeps me stuck, and I didn't (probably still don't) want to give them up or change them: the old familiar, the sweet, the comfortable, the syrupy and delicious; I kept holding out hope for the ultimate miracle: something that would make it OK to keep on going as I was with a different result, or in the absence of that: some miracle that would make it easy to change and let go.
But sometimes even the easy way is hard. And while the next steps are foggy, the direction is clear: and it's not the way I've been doing it.
And yet, no matter how much it sucks, I can't help but laugh and feel hopeful among the swirl, since I asked for it. Not this way, of course, I asked for the easy, graceful, painless change, not this hard version. But I did ask for it; daaamn.
Don't'cha hate it when that happens ... you ask the universe for something, and it doesn't turn out to look the way you want? Y'mean I'm not in charge? Go figure.
(i took these photos last week on a beach in north carolina. the trip was planned ages ago, but days of sitting by the sea couldn't have happened at a better time. how 'bout that? those growing pains don't always have to hurt ...)
Comments