My Tent on The Beach

I just installed a showerhead.  I’ve been waiting anxiously for it to come in the mail, having picked it out months ago and waited until it was on sale enough that I could “afford” this “luxury.”  I’m most excited about the fact that my skin won’t smell like chlorine after a shower anymore.  And that was my Friday night.

It’s that part of the summer, that part of the year, that part of the week, I guess, when people are doing their “summer” things–traveling, barbecuing in the backyard, spending quality time that they don’t often get–that usually leaves me installing a showerhead and calling it an evening.  I suppose it’s the price I pay for being non-busy, non-married, non-with-children, maybe non-inspired and hoping for something outside of myself to create a little interest or buzz or energy.  I’m not sure why I still think this will work; looking outside of myself for anything has only ever ended in disaster.  And so I lay here on my couch, trying to pump myself up to watch a movie and wondering how I get myself some of those things that make installing a showerhead a weekday chore to be reminsced about over a gin and tonic on the back porch with someone who’s interesting and interested.  It doesn’t seem like that much to ask but yet remains deceptively elusive. Maybe someday there’ll be a trace of this scene.

But not today.

I want to make it okay that this is what this evening holds…but it’s not just about this evening.  I often wonder if anyone ever remember how it feels to hear some iteration of “I’m too busy for you,” when they’re saying it to someone else.  I’ve just never understood this idea.  “But Katie,” they’ll say, “you just don’t understand because you have so much time and you don’t have responsibilities to worry about.”

“Well,” I think, “that’s just the shittiest thing I’ve ever heard in my entire life.” It appears I have a lot of time because I make time for people who need to talk, people who want to get together, people who need a hand with something, people who need a place to stay.  I bend and compromise; I practice understanding and compassion; I wipe my feet before entering; I bring a bottle of wine; I’m good for a laugh.  But it just never seems enough.  Because when push comes to shove, I just don’t understand enough what it means to have responsibilities–or relationships–to care for.  It’s only the thing I do every day…silently and with no symbols or markers to signify my work or care.  No. My work is silent and invisible and I should be happy for the time I do get…

…because after all…people are busy…and I have so much time.

I’m sick about it.

I haven’t ranted in awhile.  I think it’s because I’ve been trying to get my Zen on…which has been working splendidly and I live in fear of jinxing it, so I try to curb the rants.  But I just cannot let this one pass by and so I must, I must, I must increase my…honesty with a certain group of people of the world.

Far be it from me to decry another’s blogging efforts.  But I think we have to be realistic. Blogs are inherently self-serving; you’re either writing it for yourself to read or others to read.  But when it becomes understood as a service to others…that’s where I’m gonna go ahead and call 2 minutes for self-righteousness.  And you know who’s totally the worst offenders of this right now?  Blogger moms.

Now before your hackles get all up in my grill, just take a deep breath and listen.  I’m not talking about all blogger moms.  Frankly, I don’t read moms’ blogs in general because, well, why?  I have to deal with your annoying kids in reality…why would I want to read about them too?  I’m talking about moms who appoint themselves the mistresses of all things healthy, lively, fun, and energetic and then try to pass this off as a service to the world.  My issue begins with one blog in particular (which…no, I will not name…I do have some shame) but in glancing through her blogroll, I know there are others just like her hawking their special brand of “clean and healthy family living the right way.” My ultimate favorite part about all of these is their, “well, this is how I do it, but it may not be right for you” tone; “I choose to make organic whole wheat carrot and cucumber muffins from scratch every morning to feed my kids because I know they’re worth it.  But if you have to go with pop-tarts and Tang, I get it; we moms work hard.”  Oh my dear god. I actually started laughing at the last article I read on her blog which broke down why getting vegetable-fed beef is better for you.  The information was impressively good and very useful…and then came the discussion of how to go about obtaining such a thing for your family.  I’ll just summarize the whole thing by saying “the internet” and “your local farmer” were the strongest options.  I my childless self live in an urban center.  It goes without saying, I’m not real familiar with my “local farmer.”  This leaves me with…the internet…to buy beef.  What’s going on here.

My issues with discussions that happen in this particular manner stem from two points.  First, they REEK of privilege.  The right way becomes the way in which only families who have enough money–and moms who have enough time–can actually live.  I found in thoroughly systematic but completely NOT surprising that there were never any adaptations made (like in the composting article) for 1) apartment dwellers, 2) urban dwellers, 3) and people who aren’t highly literate (composting is not an activity for imbeciles…you gotta know about living stuff and shit like that).  Recipes offered…not easy and often involving ingredients you can’t pick up at the corner big box grocery store (which, sad to say, is where most of us HAVE to shop for one reason or another).  Let’s not even talk about the fact of needing special appliances.  One article on juicing (suggested as the better way to get all 8 servings of fruit per day) didn’t mention that…you need a juicer.  And that corn-fed beef you buy from the “local farmer”…right…they don’t sell that in 1lb increments…you need a whole freezer to store the side of beef you’ll end up buying (and a minivan to haul it).  The article on switching from white bread to wheat bread you bake yourself (from flour you mill yourself) provided a recipe that required a bread machine.  If you don’t have one of those, I hope you have about 3 hours to devote to the process.

Aside from what I’ll call these plausibility issues, there is that kind of normative decision made for us all (and by us I mean “women” because the men are out bringing home the bacon and running 10Ks) in each of these articles.  They do, in fact, give us a nice, neat, pin-tucked set of values to use in judging ourselves successful and valuable…there’s always kids involved and they are usually picky eaters who have to be contended with; the word “organic” comes up more often than not; there’s always “noshing” involved; bright colors and attitudes to match seem de rigeur; eliminating dairy are very important; networking and self promotion seem oddly written into the underside of the surface of everything; let’s not even talk about the “greening” of everything–apparently moms are the new Al Gore; there’s a lot of baking involved and “fast food” are 4 letter words to the power of 2; “health” is their god.  And they’re all “consultants” of something (I have to believe they’ve been promoted from within…their own happy company of one).

Bottom line: this is the production of “mom” and “family” that rivals that of Betty Crocker–this one today is just greener and more organic and even more impossible for most women (and dads and families) to achieve.  Sadly, the moms I want to know about don’t have time to blog or probably the money to explore Whole Foods (which my friend rightly refers to as “Whole Paycheck”).  And my guess is they don’t know their “local farmer” either.  And because of that, they’ll never be successful…because the “Consultant Moms” say so.  It’s actually a little socially gross…like your colon is metabolically gross after you’ve eaten grain-fed beef all your life (according to the excellent article noted above).

If they really wanted to provide a useful service to the world, Consultant Moms should take 30 minutes to sit in their Lulemon yoga pants in their perfected half-lotus pose and think about how they’re actually destroying “family” by writing about theirs.  Then just go and live a happy life in whatever form that takes and leave the rest of us to do what we’re doing…no services–or self righteousness–required.

But what do I know…I don’t have a husband or kids…so technically I’m not even a woman.

Today is one of those days.  You know the kind…my brain is just churning out a lot of thoughts that are good but really disjointed.  So, for instance, as I was waiting for my post-yoga raisin toast to prepare itself via the magic toaster this was my train of thought:

I wonder why yesterday the toaster burned the toast and today, without touching the toaster or doing anything differently, the toast is perfect? Where did I leave my flip-flops? I wonder if an all-girls high school education actually made me more masculine than many men I know? I should take a shower. Almost done with IRB. That breeze is cool. I wonder how other people experience pain?

Literally…that was in two minutes.  I walked home from yoga this morning; it took about 25 minutes and I had a lifetime’s worth of conversation with myself.  Going in 25 directions.  Whenever this happens I feel the distinct need to write everything down as quickly as possible.  There could be good nuggets of something in there which only time will reveal.  But despite this mental chattering, there was one thought I kept coming back to, I think because it didn’t originate in my brain.

In the 2 or 3 moments in between crazy shooting thoughts, I actually felt compassion.  I’ve been reading this book by Pema Chodron called The Places that Scare You and I assumed it would be a lot about fear.  It’s actually more about the opposite of fear, which as it turns out, is compassion.  Who knew?  Maybe this is where I’ve gone wrong all these years. Here’s a picture just in case you want to read (and you really should…what else are you really doing?)

Anyway I usually don’t feel ideas; I think about them, dissect them, think more about them, start to worry about them, get anxious about them, then am exhausted and can’t sleep.  That’s usual.  But, I’ve really been working on “heart opening”–I interpret it more as willing myself to feel things rather than approach them intellectually.  It’s given more dimension to my ideas; we all think a lot about love or anger or hurt.  We ultimately want to manage them, so we approach them as events and then get a plan to deal with them.  But I’m learning that if we feel them, they actually have textures…things we can grip onto a little bit and push our edges.  In other words, I think I’m learning that if we feel things, we can grow in ways that thinking about them cannot approach.

But, back to compassion.  So, I think “heart opening” is working a bit.  I was practicing feeling compassion which isn’t empathy or sympathy.  In those, we place ourselves in the shoes of others (sympathy) or recalling when we’ve actually shared the experience of another (empathy) and felt with them.  Compassion, I think, is the following step.  In compassion we stay in our own shoes, recognize the place of another (be it filled with suffering or joy), and then love them as only we can.  It’s not sharing the experience; it’s just opening our arms and loving, regardless of what happens to us or what we’ll get out of it.  I think compassion is the act of giving away love unconditionally.  We always approach that idea from the receiver’s end…I haven’t really even imagined what it feels like to give it.  I think it’s a good thing.

So this is what I’m feeling about today.  Even writing this down has slowed the chatter.  And it makes me think that in order to give this…dude, you gotta tap into a kind of strength that you just have to trust you have…because I think it’s tough.  You may hurt in the process.  But its completely worth it, I think. I mean, I feel.

Ha-HAH. Caught myself there.

Where to begin?  My little brother got married on Saturday.  Married.  The same kid we sent down the ice track we built in the ravine (which apparently only exist in Cleveland) to make sure no one else would get hurt and who said things like “Gabuter” (computer) when he was 3 is wearing a wedding band.  I’d say “surreal” except that I’ve got a Hungarian sleeping on my couch waiting for Fedex to come everyday to deliver his passport so he can drive back to Yellowknife Canada.  I’ve also got yoga class 4 days a week, I own a car and have absolutely no money to pay for it and I’m on a PhD track.  Oh, and my other brother’s going to have a baby in February.  What the heck is going on here.

Life can be full of interesting moments.  For the past 3 months I’ve been sweating blood, so consumed in my own struggles.  As it turns out, life continued on around me.  For some (my brothers), I re-surfaced just in time.  Weddings and babies, though moments that might not be part of my own journey, are  not moments to miss.  Andras appearing out of nowhere just when I was wondering when and if I’d ever see him again is a fortuitous happenstance…but not one that’s not been enjoyable.  The universe, I think, must’ve interceded…I feel like a different person for having witnessed all of it.

Tomorrow will bring a new day with different, better insights.  But what I know is this: for the past 3 weeks I have better thoughts about my life, my career, and myself than I have for a long time…and it’s because I was busy thinking about other people.

Giving always means receiving if only in the craziest of ways.  I’m glad I was awake enough to catch all of it.  Here’s to more of that!

I just noticed today that I haven’t written in awhile because life in Chicago (which is sweltering in a 90-degree heat blanket that won’t go away) has become both listless and busy.  It’s a paradox.  But as I walk down the street, I’ve been noticing weird things happening; also as I check Facebook and e-mail (occasionally, of course…okay 90x an hour) I find just weirdnesses.  Maybe it’s the heat…which would explain why New Orleans (okay, all of the Deep South) seems fully of crazies.  Here’s a list of the latest and least explicable:

1. A car burst into flames in front of my building on Monday night, filling my apartment with smoke and making me believe I was going to have to jump out my window (of course, I have back stairs but you know how panic can affect even the most rational mind.)

Here’s the aftermath.  The charred remains were particularly disturbing in person and, though it’s been towed, no one will park in that spot…it remains open…perhaps as a memory of the innocent and fallen.

2. On Facebook today I had no less than 20 “pages you might like” suggestions based on what my friends have recently “liked.”  Included and making sense were Starbucks and Free Things to Do in Chicago.  Included and making no sense were KFC, Sex and the City: The 2nd AWFUL movie, kittens, and the Twilight series (which incidentally had over 8 MILLION fans)…needless to say, none of them got my “like” of approval.

3. Several Fridays ago as Andras (my current couch-crashing, Marx-loving, Hungarian friend) and I were out and about running errands we personally saw three people hit the deck.  We also saw blood shed on those incidents.  One involved a motorized scooter and a woman carrying a VCR in a box.  On that same day we actually witnessed a guy get hit by a car, turn around and walk back to the corner, at which point he and the driver “worked it out.”  Seriously.  I’m still scarred by this particularly series of events.

4. Last night I (and Andras) ate dinner with virtual strangers (one of them was a former student of his that he “kinda” knew).  It was 4 hours long.  And I ended up going to their apartment which…it right across the street from mine…and met their dog Peanut and cat Tomato and saw their balcony garden and the guy’s (David’s) humongous oil paintings.  I felt like I was in a Willy Wonka movie.  The Johnny Depp one.

5. My brother Andy told me he bought a book for me. It’s by Glenn Beck.  It’s the one lying on his bathroom floor.  Exactly where EVERY piece of shit Glenn Beck produces should be located.  I left it there as a symbol of its appropriateness.

6. This morning I did yoga on the beach at 6:30am.  When we started the lake was placid and clear.  After a pose sequence we did with our eyes closed, it was so hot already that steam was rising off the surface of the lack.  I think I witnessed the birth of humidity.  I was appalled.

7.  Last week I bought 2 new pairs of flip-flops, one pair with a little bit of a wedge heel and one pair flat.  For the next two days I referred to the pair with the heels as “my dress shoes.”  No one questioned it. Riiiiiight.

8. I’ve been craving Thai and sushi for 3 weeks.  Thai, unfortunately, I always crave on Mondays and as any connoisseur of Thai food knows…they’re always closed on Mondays .  Yesterday we planned to go for sushi and in my head I was like, “Sweet…thank god it’s not Monday.”  When we got there it was closed.  For the summer, they decided to close on Tuesdays instead.  Argh.

I usually like to end on an odd number but I seem destined to be foiled by this weirdo universe these days.  Thus, despite wracking my brain, I can only think of 8 really good things right now.  But consider it just a taste of what’s been going on around here…which is heat-induced nuttiness.

Oooh…I thought of one more:

9.  Yesterday we were watching the World Cup game between Uruguay and the Netherlands (which, by the way, have you ever considered the actual name of that country?  The Netherlands….like the Hinterlands only a smidge closer? Further south?).  The Dutch (who hail, inexplicably from the Netherlands…why not call them the Nethers?) won.  Andras was convinced and argued seriously that it was because of the effects of colonialism.  To reiterate…he wasn’t joking.  I was actually speechless.

Give me a great #10 from your life and you’ll make my whole day…if only to prove that it’s not just my own little microcosm that’s gone all helter-skelter.

Did you know that the hips are one of the areas that can hold the most tension in the body?  Because I sure didn’t…and I can’t say I was surprised to hear this.  My hips are tighter than [insert image of something very tight...if you think of something good, write it in the comments].  My whole body is muscularly tight…I always attributed it to the 15 years of piecemeal weight lifting I used to do for various sports in high school.  You know…you do the stuff that’s the easiest (like calves, quads, hamstrings) and skip the other stuff (upper body).  What I’ve ended up with is a full set of seriously tight joints.  I never really thought tension itself was to blame.

Given this hip “issue,” I’ll tell you my life can really suck sometimes.  Sitting hunched at a computer for long stretches doesn’t help.  So, this is all a long way of saying, tight hips in yoga means pain (and not just stupid pain but gut-wrenching, fiery, scorching, lightning bolts of pain up the front, back, and sides of my legs)…in nearly every pose possible.  I can’t touch my toes, sit on my knees, or hang out in down-dog without trembling…why…you got it…hips.

So I’ve been really focusing on these things.  And you wanna know what I’ve come to conclude is working…thinking about them.  It’s Harold Hill’s “think method” from the music man.  I swear it’s working.  I’ve been thinking about my hips loosening up…and I think they are.  And here’s why I think it works.  Whenever I approached them as so tight, I think I would brace myself for the ensuing pain.  And it was real…because the bracing was a tension.  Today (and it helps that it’s about 90 degrees here), I felt like they were more open before I even bent anywhere and guess what…palms almost to ground.  Magical.

But so what?  Who cares about my hips?  Even I don’t care about my hips.  But I did think it’s an interesting lesson if applied elsewhere in life.  Imagine what would happen if every time we approached something we dread, instead of bracing for it and expecting scorching pain, we just thought about things as “looser”?  We might have a chance at being much happier and generally cooler than we have ever been in our entire lives.

I like the “think method.”  I think it could work.

So I think it would be fair to say that this spring was a tough one.  Use whatever metaphoric imagery you like, it was long and full of bumps in the road.  Doors were slamming and no windows were opening.  Mountains kept popping up left and right.  I ended up on a very stuffy mountain range of problems.  And of course in the cosmic scheme of things, my problems were relatively small.  Was I starving? No. Was I homeless? No. Did I have no shoes?  No.  Was I even walking to school uphill both ways?  No.  But while I appreciate the fact that my life could “function,” I was “less” in a lot of ways.  Vision-less, hopeless, sleepless, restless.  And some of these still persist today, but certainly not to the acute degree or the breadth that they did just several months ago.

I attribute the change to a couple things but most centrally…yoga.  It wasn’t so long ago (2 months, actually) that I regularly started taking yoga classes (not half-heartedly doing DVDs in my dining room…which I refer to as my ‘yoga studio’).  Somehow, the interaction with a teacher and other students began to work away at some of the anxieties that had built to the point of all of my ‘lesses.’  And in a way that doing yoga “at the gym” as a “workout” could never touch.  A return to the breath–the present moment–was and is the most holistically therapeutic thing I’ve ever done.  So much so, that I feel it has spurred “returns” in other places that, frankly, I thought were long gone.

“What the hell are you talking about Katie?” you must be thinking.  I understand that…the notion that enduring the burning, searing pain in my hamstrings created by a forward bend or working through the panic that arises right in my throat when I maneuver my way into a handstand or headstand could actually manifest itself in very real ways outside of the yoga studio (in this case, not my dining room) seems bizarre and crunchy-granola new agey (this is my own system of classification, just for the record).  But here’s how I’m seeing this work out:  old friends I haven’t spoken to in years have popped back up in moments that I really needed them.  (What freaks me out is that if I think real hard about it, it almost seems like I’ve “summoned” them to me…I know, I know…I’m in a panic about it myself.)  School which was an absolute albatross in February has returned as a true interest.  My financial situation–always tenuous at best–that was positively dire three months ago has positively worked itself out…and not just as a “hey I got a job at Best Buy” type of scenario but as a “hey I’m a fucking sociologist…now pay me to teach it” kind of way.  (Again, if I look hard, the Universe has clearly…CLEARLY…steered me back into the classroom in a very definitive way…and has arrange a payment system that is better than I’ve ever encountered before.)  I’ve been granted closure in the situations that were tearing me apart emotionally.  I’ve been granted insight into the most difficult challenges.  I’ve actually found in a new way what compassion means…especially in approaching myself and others with compassion.  And it’s because of those fiery forward bends and the heinous twists that make me feel like a real failure on the yoga mat.

It so interesting to really begin to understand what yoga teaches.  Everyone thinks about the “flexy-bendies”–you know, those people (usually women) who can lick their shins and turn themselves practically inside out and afterwards talk about how being a human pretzel gets them to a new level of enlightenment.  I have a new respect for them…yoga’s made them that.  But focusing on the physical stretching is just too one-dimensional; yoga has to also stretch your mind and your heart too.  Otherwise, we should call it calisthenics and be done with it.  No, yoga builds spiritual muscle-memory; it teaches you to endure, to dare, and to deal with emotions as they come and in a way that allows you to learn control and mastery of them.  Yogis talk about it in terms of detachment.  I just call it sanity.

But I’m glad I’m plugged into it.  It seems whenever I really focus on it, the Universe responds to me and returns me to exactly where I need to be.  And gives me things like this as a sign that I’m doing okay.

Well, well.  In completely typical fashion, Chicago’s gone and gotten all hot and humid, once again banishing any hopes for a nice sliiiiiiiide into summer.  I’m not sure why I still hope for that; I’ve lived around the Great Lakes my entire life and somehow I’ve never really experienced the change of seasons as something gradual.  Whether spring or fall, it usually begins and ends with a seasonal line drawn in the sand.  Yesterday could’ve been 65 and rainy; today you wake up and it’s 90 and renders all clothing hot, wooly, wet blankets.  So today, I’m caught in the “it’s so hot it I’m nauseous” feeling of late August and a little worried that it’s only June 23.

Thus, I’m going to blame a couple of my own lazinesses directly on the swoon.  This is why life in the deep South in general feels so leisurely–the heat actually causes (maybe forces) life to slow down.  Also, it drives you to drink and it’s well established that alcohol slows everything down too.  So why haven’t I written here in awhile?  Clearly…it’s the swoon.

But I’ll also say this (whether or not the swoon is to blame here I don’t know): This time of the year becomes intensely boring for me.  Summer scheules annoy the hell out of me; they’re too flabby.  To be clear, my schedule is always flabby, so I rely on the schedules of others to be my “schedule corset” if you will.  Now, we’re all a little flabby around the schedule and it’s bordering on what I may describe as just “stupid.”  No purpose, no momentum, no desire for either purpose or momentum.  Ew.  I’ve had very little to think about, write about, or describe in what seems like weeks.  I saw a lot of people last week, had a lot of conversations, was out and about.  Did any of them really make a mark on anything? No.  It was oddly non-descript “business as usual.”  I felt like I missed a lot of opportunities last week and yet I never stopped moving.  Maybe ultimately I was uncomfortable with all of that and decided not to reflect on it…I don’t know.

This also might be the calm after the storm.  The past couple months have been intensely taxing; I can’t believe I’m gonna say it but I’ve never been that stressed out in my whole life (and I’m always stressed out).  No, no.  This was stress at all new levels.  Now a lot of that has dissipated whether for good or for bad.  I’m wondering if I just don’t know how to deal with non-stress.  That would be sad…and also a real paradox.  Maybe I’ve overdosed on yoga.

All I’m saying is this: a little snap in the air, a cool fresh breeze…and I think life happens a little more freely.  Slogging through this wet blanket…makes me just want to give up on the day and watch tv.  Which is narcotizing, yes…but leaves very little to actually think about.

[Sigh.]

[Sweat.]

[Sigh again.]

I’ve never been a fan of the Manichaeins.  They were an ancient competitor of Christianity, professing the belief in a dualistic approach to everything.  We all hang in the balance between two opposing forces vying for our souls.  ”What forces?”  you may ask.  Everyone together now: “Good and Evil.”  It sure makes things simple doesn’t it?

And as much as I don’t like this particular kind of simplicity, I can’t help but embrace a much more holistic idea of balance and complementarity.  I think the principles could be the same: I think there are opposing forces at work very often in my life but they don’t work to rend me apart as much as the work to balance the social order of things.  When I’m having a particularly horrendous day, very often my close friends are experiencing the opposite.  When I’m frustrated, if I’m open to it, I notice people stepping in, usually subconsciously, to alleviate that.   A day after I seem to make amazing progress on whatever challenge I’ve been laboring, there always seems to be an inevitable fall from grace (usually and ungraceful one).  I’ve never considered these opposing forces pulling me outward, farther and farther apart.  I’ve only come to understand them more definitely as a process of falling in and out of balance.  There’s always a yin to a yang.  There’s always a sweet to a savory.  There’s always compassion to follow judgement.  There’s always light after darkness.

One of my more recent insights of which I’m particularly proud (but really not attached) is to realize that these rhythms, this balance, is not linear.  These balancing forces appear to us as a cycle; ultimately, I think we can trust in the rhythm.  When we approach it as linear, everything appears out of place and is scary and creates anxiety.  If we’re always moving forward without paying attention to the backward, then we’re certainly going to be lost.  While the present always brings us something new, it also always (ALWAYS) reminds us of something old, something familiar, comfortable, to be honored.  But how much is that balance.  We have to want the balance…otherwise, the rhythm disappears.

This is a really abstract reflection on really concrete events I’m watching happen today.  From one source I see hurt–disappointment, discouragement, and wounding.  In the meantime, another source experiences great joy, abundance, and love.  I’m sitting in between contemplating watching “Glee” again and finding some contentment for both right where I’m standing right now.

It’s a weird day.  In that rhythmic, balanced sort of way.

I’m going to warn you now this post may not be funny.  I won’t run away from it should it happen organically, but this is a “thinkin’ reflectin” kinda post.  And why?  Because I’ve been thinking big picture lately and it’s easier to see some revealed truths when one considers the breadth of one’s life.

“It’s been a rough couple months.” I realized I’ve been saying that, now, for years.  ”I just gotta get through this next interminably long period of waiting and things will be okay.” Then, like clockwork, another interminably long period of waiting starts on another new worry.  It’s seemed neverending…and is when approached in that fashion.

What I realized the other day, though, as I was sitting and lamenting to myself is that I’ve been coming at all of this from only one direction.  If I run around the other side of my worry, what appears is a huge opportunity: I have the time everyone wants to figure my shit out.  Yes, I have work to do.  Everyone has work to do.  But I do have the chance to really reach in and find myself in there– a lot of people don’t.  And I should really stop waiting and start reaching.

I think everybody has one major personal mountain to climb in their lives.  This isn’t hardships–I think we all have a lot of those.  But hardships are circumstantial; we struggle, usually, because we have to meet reality everyday and sometimes, when our expectations and our world doesn’t match up evenly, we run into trouble.  The personal mountain, though, is that one foundational “issue” that sets the tenor for all struggles.  It’s those little dark parts of ourselves we don’t want to think about that drive the way we respond to tough circumstances.  Mine personal mountain is definitely born directly from fear of reaching.  I’m growing convinced that this is why I’m so worried about getting swallowed up, lonely and alone, by the sands of time.  I’m not a reacher.  I’m a nester.

So, in all of my “time” that I have to think about things, I’ve realized that I’m not going to un-stick myself from this place unless I actually start reaching…somewhere.  Instead of being solely reactionary, I’ve got to reach beyond that and be a little proactive.  Instead of clinging to the idea of routine, I have to reach beyond that.  Being the Disney princess that I am, I think I’ve grown accustomed to the idea of fate–things happening.  And I’m actually coming around to see that fate is what happens when you realize that just letting things happen will lead you in random directions.

Life is reaching.  I’m not sure I’ve really found that yet but I’m willing to give it a try.