Ramblings, rants, musings, explorations, ideas, fears, loves and... Perspectives.
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.
At times, the insane complexity of life overwhelms you, swallows you up, and deposits you at the edge of a chasm so desperately deep and terrifying that the only thing you can do is kick pebbles over the rim and listen to see whether you can hear them to hit the bottom. The icy gusts of wind threatening to pull you over don’t phase you. The cadaver birds are circling on thermals far enough below your perch that you (blessedly) cannot see what will comprise their next meal. No one seems to be around for miles upon miles and you understand only in the vaguest sense that you have neither food nor water nor first aid kit in this place. Even when the rescuers arrive and wrap you in blankets, you remain fixated on the outcropping where you so recently knelt, still not quite keyed in to the inherent danger of that space.
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.
"If I can't be creative, I'll die."
While I'm not often given to being that hyperbolic (because thoughts have great power when you put them in words that strong), I chose them purposefully when I spoke them to a group of co-workers during an off-site annual planning meeting this past week.
I'm sure that just about everyone who lives their lives in the weekday/weekend time measuring paradigm can relate to having some weekends that are truly stellar among the humdrum of myriad status quo weekends. My wedding weekend was like that, a little bubble of experience that floats well above most of the other events of my life. I would put forward that there is another category of weekend worth considering, too, where the events are out of the ordinary in a generally positive sense while not necessarily of a caliber to sing their praises from the heavens. Those, I feel, are worth capturing, worth the work of documenting for later because they are the stuff of a real life well-lived.
I'm good at telling my stories but I'm also pretty proficient at playing my cards close to my chest. Should I elaborate? Alrighty. I'm good at telling the pretty stories - the happy endings, the inspiring snippets, the silly happenings around my home involving my two precocious young men. The stuff I tend to hold back? All that other stuff. The shame stuff, the guilt stuff, the shoulda-woulda-coulda, want-it-so-badly-but-I-don't-think-I-really-"deserve"-it stuff.
What follows is a collection of thoughts I captured as I traveled. There's no intentional or crafted flow to it but I think it works well enough without me meddling too much.