I quit. I’m not going to do this anymore. I want to be approachable and refreshing and not be the girl who brings all her luggage to the conversation. I’ve been thinking that it’s all them, the reason I couldn’t get past this junk was because they wouldn’t let me.

Extending the narrative: Seth Godin

We dismiss the mid-life crisis as an aberration to be avoided or ridiculed, as a dangerous blip in a consistent narrative. But what if we had them all the time? What if we took the resources and trust and momentum that helps us but decided to let the other stuff go?

On surrender and resignation: Andrea

This possibility of true surrender. It excites me. Quite possibly, for the first time in my life, I have just experienced a real kind of surrender. There is nothing to do, not because I am powerless, but because there is nothing to do. There is only being with what is. Being with things as they are. No agenda.

I take these articles with a grain of salt until their words are the ones I couldn’t figure out how to say for myself. Then I read them over and over again. I journal about them and write essay’s in response to them. If they were meant to be a calling card, I answer them regularly.

These articles and tidbits like them are everywhere I look lately. A not so subtle clue. Creating turmoil to strap myself down to something that no-one (but me, apparently) is struggling with … is not helping.

I’ve found a new, endless road to drive on over and over again. A simple way to release myself with the scenery of rolling flat spaces dotted with dogwoods and old red barns. Rotting iron and all kinds of dandelions. My literal version of eye-candy.

So we play it safe and go back to our story. Source

And I’m really afraid of doing this. Of going back to my story. Of bleeding all over my paper in bright blue ink and closing my book to stand up, face what’s left and turn around, sprinting towards everything I already know to be true false.

I comb the highways roaming this side of my reality making mental notes about all the beautiful things I see. All the thankfulness I experience. A worship to the wanderer inside of me. No direction, hardly any discretion … just one motion … forward. And fast.

Like a dressing room of emotions, it’s dangerous to be this in control of myself. Trying on dispositions like I would try on a t-shirt at the Gap. When I walk out and smile in the 3-way mirror there’s only one vote … and it’s mine. For the first time.

I keep telling people that I want to leave this space behind, this part of me that I’m exercising right now. I don’t want to be this vulnerable or this open. I want a few of my chapters to be left untold … and yet maybe I’m just getting used to this part of me. Maybe I’m finally just owning this voice of mine. And I see happiness and joy and peace in this voice, I can’t discount the raw and vulnerable because where there’s a tenor of hope, there’s also the alto of fear.

But I’m exhausted and often exhausting and I quit. I’m sorry it’s taken me so long, mostly for me, but for you too. I’m not this girl, this is not the sum total of who I am and yet it’s all I can do convince myself otherwise most days.

Who knows what tomorrow will bring … what ever it is – it won’t be another today. And that is a little Hip Hip Hooray.