Ramblings, rants, musings, explorations, ideas, fears, loves and... Perspectives.
Posted in: EatTheFruit
My home is in the suburbs but where I work is tucked in the middle of the opposite of urban. There’s some farmland, some wooded areas, a large lake, and the kinds of spaces that make up the distance between most small Northeast Georgia towns. Boat storage lots. Used car dealerships. Bait shops. Fruit and veggie stands. Boiled peanuts, trailer parks, Dollar Generals, and Piggly Wigglys.
And lots of back roads.
Maybe you can feel it?
There’s a growing… Tension.
Only maybe “growing” isn’t the right word. Expanding, pulling, stretching, rolling. Insistent. Immense.
Like that tension I remember in my belly in the last weeks before I gave birth. Full up. No more room. Itchy, pressing, dragging, about to pop. Threatening. Looming. Potential.
After you’ve been a writer for just so long (I don’t know how long, but “so” long), you get inspiration at the most seemingly innocuous times. But it’s not so much the getting of the inspiration but the noticing then capturing of the inspiration that becomes vitally important.
What inspiration did I notice this morning that I knew I needed to capture? Two used tea bags.
And there was still a sweatshirt splattered with barbecue sauce waiting, forlorn and forgotten, in the downstairs bathroom sink…
When I work things out just right, I can manage a day where AFTER I work a full shift, I stop on the way home and get groceries, all from a list that I wrote out the day before, not deviating by more than a couple items. I get everything trucked home, cold stuff put away, pantry stuff put away, fruits and veggies on the counter rearranged just so. The kids are home or come home from school and occupy themselves.
September always feels to me like an ambitious month. The kids are far enough into school that we're beginning to get a sense of what this school year (or at least this semester) is going to be like. My husband, freed of the summertime job of boychild-wrangling, is exploring his creative passions with more gusto. Being the weirdo who actually misses school, I am inspired to join as many classes, courses and challenges as I can find.
This post was going to be titled, "When You're Not Scared Anymore," but I realized I can't speak to that. I am scared. And nervous and anxious and worried... And working on changing that for the better. For myself, for my family, and for our future.
Right now, I'm in the midst of one of the scariest, most unbalanced, unsure of anything periods in my life. Yet the one thing I keep settling on, in the midst of the tumultuous moments and in the calmer, more centered moments, is that I want to be creating more. I have SO many ideas: so many stories, movies, books, paintings, doodles, cards, businesses, photos, crocheted objects, interviews, apps, and courses - and those are just the things I can think of in under two minutes!
I named this website "Evolving Perspective" because it represents most wholly (and in the fewest words) my experience of the world. Everyone's perspective changes constantly, even throughout the course of the day. Noticing where my perspective is during any given situation is what is most vital for my functioning and for my well being. Yes, you can be simultaneously functioning AND unwell - it's never a good place to spend too much time. For me, it takes enough uncomfortable situations within a certain amount of time to realize that something about my perspective is out of kilter.
My favorite places to hang out as a child included the tops of trees, the insides of couch pillow forts, the underneaths of tables (especially when the grown-ups had forgotten I was there), and just about anywhere where I could watch the clouds going by overhead. The outskirts. The edges of where the action was happening. Places were I could observe but still stay separate if I wanted.