Wow. It has been so stinkin’ long since I have written just for the sake of writing. I truly do love it and I have been so blessed to be able to write as a job now but I find that I don’t just sit down to write for fun if I have a paid writing project sitting in the wings that I need to work on. That changes today. Writing has always been a passion of mine. As a little girl I wanted to write and I was that weird girl who enjoyed the English writing projects in school. What a nerd. I used to read all the time and now I can’t pick up a book because I am always teetering on the edge of tired and a book just shoves me over that ledge in two paragraphs and I find myself sleeping instead. So, with my ongoing lack of creative writing or reading, I have found myself lately with this built-up story inside me. It starts to write itself in my brain at the most inopportune times when I cannot actually put it down on paper. I knew it was a sign that I needed to take the time to purposely give my mind that space and tell it…so here it goes.

Once upon time, there was a girl who was too busy. She had 4 kids, a husband, a job, another job, etc. oh, and two puppies. She did this to herself and she owned it. She loved her life as chaotic as it was and yet she was always trying to play catch up and never felt like her ducks were anywhere on the property let alone in a row. Occasionally, very occasionally the laundry would be caught up but never at the same time as the dishes. It was a baffling mystery to her that somehow as her life continued to get more and more hectic, she had managed to start actually keeping house plants alive even though they were often under watered. Maybe that was the secret all along? She had too many hobbies but none of which she wanted to let go and often she added more. She wanted to do it all and be everything to everyone and still somehow take care of herself. She was the ultimate pipe dreamer. You would think this story ended with this girl getting it all figured out and somehow balancing everything well but it doesn’t. It ends like this…And the girl, continued on this way until the end of her life when she died a happy and fulfilled woman albeit with a lot of unfinished business.

I mean that is the real story, right? No one ever figures out how to truly do it all and be everything to everyone flawlessly while still taking care of themselves right? I don’t think it is possible. I know I could cut out some of the things that I do in my life to bring more order to the others but it just isn’t worth it to me. I have legit fomo in life and I will be damned if I am going to give up some amazing life experiences just to make my everyday life more…boring. That’s what it would be right? If I made it simpler and I just did the bare minimum and cut everything else out it would be organized and all picture perfect but that is straight boring and that is the last thing I want. So, here I sit. I am juggling way too many balls and some of them are still in the air, some fell to the ground a long time ago and some of them are in my hands waiting to be sent back into motion. This way of living used to bother me personally about myself. I had these really high expectations for myself and when I didn’t reach the ridiculously high bar I felt like a failure. I would use it against myself as proof of why I wasn’t good enough or some people didn’t think I was good enough. I’ve since learned to accept that part of who I am even though I never stop working on my short comings. I am currently working on the part of me that is still bothered by how other people perceive me. I know that my priorities and the way I live my life will not line up with other people. Some people won’t agree with it and may judge me. Some days I don’t care but other days I still find myself judging my actions through the lens of others and letting that lens contaminate the way I view myself and my worth. I spent a lot of my life making decisions based on what I thought would make other people happy. Reality is, you CANNOT make everyone else happy and in the process of trying you will lose touch with who you are, what you think and what you want. I still do things just for other people to help them or make them happy. I am not living my life just self-absorbed. I was just so completely out of touch with myself from paying way too much attention to what others thought and wanted that I had to make some pretty drastic changes to my approach in order to figure out what I personally really wanted and what made me happy. It is still a work in progress. I have found that it is similar to learning how to paddle board. At first when you are learning how to go straight you end up swinging the nose of your board way left and then you overcorrect going way to the right until you finally figure out how to keep things more centered and in the middle.

When people are accustomed to the version of you that is always focusing on making them happy even though they probably don’t realize that is what you have been doing all along and then you suddenly start making decisions based off of what you really want to do it can make people uncomfortable. Suddenly the person that they thought you were is actually quite different and they may even take the changes personally because they don’t understand them. If you are anything like me you are also probably pretty inept at communicating anything about yourself so when people are trying to figure out this new version of you that actually has an opinion and doesn’t just go with the flow you might make matters even worse trying to explain what is going on. That is just my personal experience. I did not land gracefully in this new space I had created for myself. I came flying in from the roof, crashing through everything in my path and landed on my face. Luckily, I am pretty comfortable on my face because I land here a lot and I know how to brush myself off and orientate myself pretty quickly.

Now that I brushed the dirt off my face and I can look around my new found world I can more clearly evaluate what I am going to focus on. I am just looking at it though my own lens now not everyone else’s around me. I want to prioritize my kids, my marriage, my job and my projects. My priorities are all staying pretty much the same as they always have but my approach to them is now focused on what I want to accomplish in these areas. Not what I think others want me do with my kids. Not what I think others want me do with my marriage. Not what I think other people want me do with my job and certainly not what I think other people want me to do with my projects. A lot of people have opinions but none of them are living my life and none of them have to live with the results of the choices I end up making in these areas. I have to live with those and at the end of the day all that matters is that I am proud of the things I have done even if I am the only one. If I reach the end of my life and no one is happy with what I decided to do with it but I lived it focused on the things that I personally cared about and I am proud of the decisions I made, that is winning. What a horrible end of life it would be if everyone around me was happy with everything I did but I had completely left myself and my thoughts, priorities and happiness out of the picture. What good is everyone else’s happiness about my life if I was never personally involved in it. I recently heard someone say that you cannot place anyone else at the top of your list besides you because you are not at the top of anyone else’s list. Again, I am not saying that you should be self-absorbed and everything in life should revolve around you. Instead, I am saying that each individual, yourself included, is responsible for their own happiness and taking care of themselves. It is not your job to make everyone else happy. It is not anyone else’s job to make you happy. It is your job.

So, to circle back to the beginning of this story, my life is crazy full and I don’t juggle it perfectly but it is full of the things that matter to me and make me happy. I might not be doing this life thing the way people around me think I should but it doesn’t matter because I am doing it the way that I feel is right for me and in the end that is a life that I can live with and be proud of when it is all over.