I took some time off from unnecessary things.
The month of December is busy for me, and I wasn’t quite as prepared to keep up certain portions of my business. Social media is one of those areas. I know we make time for what really matters to us, and when it comes down to it, that constant need to S-H-A-R-E isn’t a driving force so much in my life anymore.
That’s liberating. And, somewhat surprising, considering I wrote a quite active (daily) blog for a period of time in my life. Writing, at least for me, requires a significant amount of introspection and, well, basically me staring off into space … between … my … words.
I think slowly, though I too often act impulsively… Most likely that’s due to my frustration with my sluggish brain. Writing, much like life, requires my patience. If I’m going to create anything of substance, I have to give myself room to mull, to consider, to grow. I have to be okay with the time my head requires to really process my experiences. My knee-jerk reactions are rarely the words I’d want written down for the ages, and words… we don’t get to take them back.
One of the reasons I feel liberated from the habit of needing to insta-share all the time is that most of what I say in the heat of the moment is just my own dysfunction talking. You can’t even call it truth; it’s habit. Sure, there’s therapy in unburdening the soul, but what’s sitting on the tip of my tongue rarely mirrors my soul. There’s also something to be said in creating a real-life problem out of fleeting emotion.
I don’t know where blogging fits in. On one hand, I love the idea that this is my channel, my avenue for putting out … whatever I want. In the past, though, it’s also been a place for me to release undeveloped thoughts that then take on greater meaning for having been put out into the world. If you throw a handful of seeds into fertile soil, you better hope they are flowers and not weeds.
I want flowers.
They take more time and more tending, and I have more to lose. Creating something beautiful requires my dedication to maintain it. It isn’t easy. It isn’t easy at all.
I prefer easy. I preferred the days when it was more important to me that I just say something that it was to really say something. Back then, I had convinced myself that content was creation, and it didn’t matter that I knew in my heart that I could do better. I could do something more than mundane. I could and I can, in fact, do something quite beautiful with my words, my work, and my life. But that takes effort and responsibility and dedication. It takes planning and fortitude. It takes being slow, pondering, and peaceful in a world that’s fast, impulsive, and anxiety-riddled. It takes the understanding that the journey to doing something great is paved with fear veiled as apathy. It takes not giving in to the voices in your head, not giving up when the going gets hard, and trying harder than you did yesterday.
Over the last year, I’ve struggled to create a simpatico with my life, my writing, and my jewelry business. I’ve found myself mired in the disjointedness of it all. I’ve watched the “what if I fail?”s come up again and again. Sometimes, I hop on that bus and end up walking home in the rain, soggy and defeated, and other times, I am able to let it pass, recognizing it for what it is: a fleeting thought that will pass if I just let it go.
In the end, these struggles are the result of me avoiding the hard work in favor of the instant satisfaction of giving in to my passing whims. Over the past year, there’s been a shift in me. Looking back on my former self, it’s almost as if I am a parent considering a petulant child. That child might have said otherwise, but she believed that life was essentially meant to be easy. She believed that her dreams were out there and as life moved forward, they would just … happen. Having a baby would be easy. Creating a business would be easy. Publishing a book would be easy. Navigating a loving marriage? Easy.
These are my dreams. Some I’ve achieved, some I haven’t, and some might simply be out of my reach. The parent of that petulant child knows now that this is things as they are. And, if I can just let go of my outrageous expectations of easy, I can recognize the sheer brilliance and beauty of my life exactly as it is.
