Maybe You're Gonna Come Back

The lyrics from the song "Maybe" by Ingrid Michaelson are really hitting home for me today. This song says to me that you can't keep someone by refusing to let them go... so you let them go, and hope they might come back one day. In the meantime you get on with your life. I know that Mike is not coming back, and that I probably shouldn't want him to. But I am still sad and I still miss him every single day. Sometimes I just want him to show up on my doorstep unannounced, envelop me in a bear hug, and tell me he came to his senses and will never walk away again.

I don't wanna be the one to say goodbye
But I will, I will, I will
I don't wanna sit on the pavement while you fly
But I will, I will, oh yes I will

'Cause maybe in the future, you're gonna come back
You're gonna come back around
Maybe in the future you're gonna come back
You're gonna come back

Oh, the only way to really know is to really let it go
Maybe you're gonna come back, you're gonna come back
You're gonna come back to me

I don't wanna be the first to let it go
But I know, I know, I know
If you have the last hands that I want to hold
Then I know I've got to let them go

Oh, the only way to really know is to really let it go
Maybe you're gonna come back, you're gonna come back
You're gonna come back

I still feel you on the right side of the bed
And I still feel you in the blankets pulled over my head
But I'm gonna wash away, oh I'm gonna wash away
Everything till you come home to me


Oh, the only way to really know is to really let it go
Maybe you're gonna come back, you're gonna come back
You're gonna come back to me

My "Balance" List

I've been thinking a lot about how to start addressing the parts of my life that need attention, to stop being so disappointed, to bring joy back into my life.

I am reminded of a Wheel of Life diagram where you rate on a scale of 1 to 10 your satisfaction in each of these areas of your life: Career, money, health/fitness, friends/family, significant other/romance/intimacy, personal growth/spirituality, fun/recreation, physical environment. At the moment, when I complete this exercise, I score the lowest in health/fitness, fun/recreation, and significant other/romance/intimacy. So I've thought about what I can do to improve how I feel about these aspects of my life.

Here is the list of things I've come up with to get things back on track:

1. Create some systems around eating, cooking, and being healthy to make this easier to stick to.
2. When I'm down or overwhelmed, I have a tendency toward the path of least resistance (i.e. cereal for dinner because it takes 30 seconds to make, letting laundry/cleaning/tidying/chores build up rather than addressing them as needed). So maybe I can jumpstart a mindset of things being back on track by putting in the time and simply acting like things are on track. Take the time to prep food for healthy meals. Do one chore per day. I'll be busy enough that I won't have so much time to dwell on the negative!
3. Date for fun for the next couple of months. FUN ONLY. Nothing serious. And in that vein...
4. Join a singles social club. (Not a dating service! Just fun activities planned for members, all of whom are single). 
5. Take a culinary class with Dirty Apron Culinary School.
6. Yoga, twice a week, every week. Exceptions only if my disc flares up and makes it impossible.
7. Walks or moderate hikes. My goal is to do something active at least 4 times a week. Yoga above obviously counts towards this! Use my wall calendar at home to keep track of days when I've done this.
8. Try some water sports in the summer. Go kayaking at Deep Cove. Take a paddleboarding or windsurfing lesson. See if you can get out on a boat.

Turning Negativity On Its Head

I'm not going to sugar-coat it; the last two weeks have been a hellish roller-coaster of emotions for me. I broke up with my boyfriend of 6 months, but not because I wanted to or for any particular reason that I can identify. I still don't fully understand what happened; it's just the way the cards seem to have fallen.

I am angry, I deserve better treatment than I got, I love him, I feel ignored, I regret my mistakes, I want to fix things, I miss him, I'm in denial, I am devastated, I want to make him feel guilty, I want to be heard & understood, I just want him to be happy, I want to be happy. I feel all these things at once, or in very quick succession from moment to moment. I'm surprised by the intensity of my feelings; I've only known him for six months, but I thought he was It. I fell so hard and fast for him, it seems I lost track of just how much distance I covered in that fall! Over the last two weeks I've felt confused... so VERY confused. I've had moments of happiness, inspiration, and motivation. But mostly I've cried oceans of tears. I've taken a day off work because I woke up last Friday with an emotional hangover, my eyes so red & puffy from crying all night that they were nearly swollen shut. I do not like this upheaval. I miss his physical closeness. I miss talking to him. I just miss him.

Beyond my romantic partnership falling apart, I have been unhappy in several aspects of my life compared to where I think they *should* be. Feeling so bereft because I miss Mike naturally makes me think about other ways I also feel disappointed... it's that downward spiral thinking we all do from time to time. Sometimes I get so trapped in it that climbing out of the negative spiral seems like too much effort. I climb out anyway, because being down there sucks out my soul, but then I'm so spent that I'm certainly not about to go fixing all the areas of my life that clearly need attention. Which, ironically, is exactly what I need to do to prevent that type of thinking again in the future.

All this emotion spilling out of me makes me hyper-aware of my thoughts, my surroundings, the consequences of my actions and decisions. I feel more alive than usual, because I'm feeling things so deeply right now.

I think I'm starting to accept that I'm single again, that this is my new reality, and the dust is beginning to settle. But before I go back to feeling neutral, I want to channel the alive-ness into action.  All those corners of my life that I've given up on fixing... I want to dust off the cobwebs there and do something good while I'm paying attention. I want the phrase "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger" to actually MEAN SOMETHING to me. It hasn't before; what hasn't killed me thus far has definitely made me weaker.

I'm going to change that.

Makeup for a Breakup

The ongoing dilemma of my week: While going through a particularly emotional breakup, when putting on your brave face for the day, do you try to cover up your puffy red eyes with a full face of makeup and particular attention to your eyes? This way I think you'll look your best right up until the moment that song comes on the radio and your mascara ends up leaked all over your face. Or do you go minimalist and possibly look moderately awful all day, but never risk the look of black smudged tearstains?

First world problems. I would like to know the answer.

With Apologies to Sean Kingston

Photo credit: Life's a Blog

Drive. Spark. Fulfillment. Joy. Fire burning, fire burning on the dance floor. It's all about one thing: Following your passion. Can we talk about this for a minute? I have a beef with it.

Follow your passion, say all the career advisors and life coaches and self-help junkies. Do what you love and the money will follow. If your job is not related to your purpose for being put on this earth, you will regret it. It's pinned all over the "words of wisdom" Pinterest boards, for Pete's sake. And, cue eye rolling. It happens so often these days I'm afraid my eyes might get stuck back there like my mother warned me as a kid.

In my life, I've held 17 different jobs. 10, if you don't count the ones I had for 3 months or less. In that illustrious collection of employers, I have had exactly one job that I genuinely loved. (Coffee barista, for the record). I hated one job so much, it left me with more damage than the emotional baggage accumulated by the combined sum total of my teenage years and the endings of three serious romantic relationships. Man, that job really was toxic to my soul. But the rest... well, meh. They were fine, I made some friends, and I was glad they afforded me the ability to do some interesting things with my time when I wasn't on the clock.

One of those cool things I've been able to do is travel. And I've done enough of it to learn that people in most countries view work as a way to pay for the things you need and want in the parts of your life that aren't spent working.

Somewhere along the way our culture has become OBSESSED with the notion that your paid work must also be your one true passion. And ironically, while we have collectively deemed this the most worthy way to spend our working life, we also accuse each other of "selling out" when we accept compensation for doing what we love. Maybe it's inevitable that we'll attack those who have managed to achieve the dreams we have for ourselves, as a way of offloading the jealousy without having to acknowledge it; I don't know. Regardless, this business of following your passion during your working hours has become the new golden standard.

Now, a disclaimer: If you have a job that feeds your soul as well as your bank account, hats off to you. I'm not saying we should AVOID doing this for a career. But, I do think it puts a lot of pressure on people who probably already have perfectly decent jobs. I think it might be harmful to insist it is the only route to happiness (as though Happiness is some sort of destination with only one correct route... be careful, stay left at the fork or you might inadvertently end up in Hell! And you can't retrace your steps if you go the wrong way, it's all or nothing!)
What I've learned from my own work experience is this: the only REALLY important thing is not to spend half your waking hours doing something you actively loathe, that conflicts with your core values and makes you feel like a miserable failure with nothing to offer the world. Don't take that job, and if you have that job, find another. You can take any other job, because you don't have to get all your joy and fulfillment from the thing you're paid to do. And I am SO SICK of feeling like my job is not good enough because it's not my "calling."

I have several problems with this, really. For the sake of brevity, which I'm failing at miserably with this post, let's go with bullet points:

• This notion of having just ONE true passion is silly. You can be happy doing any number of different things. (Guess what? I like my job just fine!)
• I have a feeling that my "calling," if I have one, is to be a mother. But the time is not right for me to have a child yet. So does that mean I should just crawl into a hole and not work until I have a child to care for? Does my work in the meantime have no value?
• Tying your earning power to the activity you are most passionate about can put a lot of pressure on the object of that passion. Now you're not  just doing it out of love - you are required to, even if your creative reserves or ideas are dry.
• Some passions can only be monetarily successful if you are an expert (i.e. acting, writing, singing, cooking). If you are passionate about something for which your enthusiasm exceeds your skill, this may not make for a very fulfilling career.
• The argument for following your passion as a career is often that it takes up half your waking hours. Well, what about the other half? What's wrong with devoting that time to your passions instead?

In the end, this is all a very self-indulgent argument. We worry about these things because we are privileged enough that we don't need to worry about food, water or shelter, so we have time to think about our maximum potential beyond just staying alive. But have you ever noticed that with options comes a lot of stress? The happiest kids are the ones kicking around a soccer ball in the dirt in rural Africa, not the ones being shuttled from piano lessons to baseball practice to a math tutoring in an effort to find their passions.

Don't put so much pressure on it. Just have fun with your life.

Moving Into the 21st Century



Hey, looky what I got!

Radio Silence

I've been having an internal struggle regarding the launching of this new blog over the last month, hence the radio silence while I quietly grappled with it. I'm not sure what it is about me, but I always do this... get super GUNG! HO! about something new and rush full-steam-ahead with it with no regard for pacing myself, only to (obviously!) run out of power, ideas, or desire.

It's not in my nature to want to do things anything at half power, and blogging is no  exception. I can't muster the energy or commitment to post every day, so I just didn't post at all. Can someone explain to me why once or twice a week seems so ludicrous to me? I suffer from this same predicament when it comes to healing my back from its herniated disc... I want to go all out exercising or else just sit on the couch for a year until I can.

But I am slowly learning about moderation, in all aspects of my life, and it's a good time for this lesson. Really, this utter avoidance of things I want to do if I can't give them 100% is about fear of failure. I've felt like a failure so often in the last few years that I'm not sure my heart can take it if I add any more endeavours to the pile, so best not to try, right? But come on now, we're talking about blogging... there is no failing at something I do for fun. Maybe if I allow myself to just enjoy writing for the sake of participating in blogging, I can consider that a success, even if I'm not Winning At The Internet.

I am not going to commit to any posting frequency. But I will commit to blogging. I know this is one of my passions. I feel like I'm living a fuller life when this is part of my life. I need a creative outlet; I want my story to be heard, I want to connect with others. I want this little dusty corner of my own on the Internet. I want to pretty it up and may even do just that in the near future.

Please say hello so I know who's out there!