It’s been two months since I sat down to write a post. What’s funny is that it feels so much longer ago than that. Time is moving at a strange pace these days. When I say these days I mean “for the last year of my life”.
Having little kids makes time bend in a new way. 15 minutes can feel like hours when I’m waiting for them to finally go take a nap. 14 months seems like it went by in a flash when I look at Caleb taking his wobbly first steps.
Mix that with a global pandemic and things get a little extra trippy.
A lot had been going on in my head when I took a break from writing publicly. When I launched this website, I was on fire with motivation. I just had a reading with psychic Ainslie MacLeod. I thought I would ask him all of these questions about Tanya and the boys, but the Spirit Guides had something else in mind. They were unrelenting in expressing to me that I needed to be doing my work. They did their best to explain through him what that was. I did my best to interpret all of it.
Ya see I have always known that I was supposed to be doing something important. That seems kind of subjective I know. “Important to who?” Me. I want to be doing work that feels important to me.
I remember being at a Winter Solstice party Tanya’s organization was throwing. It was in huge Vietnamese restaurant on the North Side of Chicago. She works for a large non-profit with a few different divisions serving a lot of different populations. At one point in the night, the heads of the organization stand up to talk about the achievements of each division over the last year. As they’re listing the people they served and the work they did I just sat there wondering out loud “What the hell am I doing with my life?”
It was such a defining moment. Here is a group of people effecting real change in lives of thousands of people. I was just talking to bedroom musicians, rich old white men, and a few rockstars who had a problem with some guitar they ordered. It seemed so frivolous. So empty.
I felt that emptiness seep from my mind into my skin over time. No amount of IPAs or busyness could numb me enough or distract me enough. A light had been turned on inside me and it was shining in this big empty purposeless void that had been my working life.
Here’s the thing though. In the movies when a moment like this happens, you’re gonna get a montage of how the protagonist starts making all these changes in their life to start “doing the thing”.
That shit don’t happen in real life.
Let’s be real. Even filming an actual montage for a movie takes a ton of time and work. You have to set up all those scenes. Costumes. Locations. Camera angles. That’s the part we don’t think about when we’re watching two minutes of fast cut scenes full of high-jinx roll by with some properly moody song playing underneath.
Making the changes takes time.
Sometimes, a helluva lot of it. And it’s messy. And it’s uncomfortable. And you get it wrong… a lot. But every couple of steps you get one magical little moment that makes the cut and shows up in your cool little montage in your movie.
When I dipped out for these last two months, I was making some changes. I had been reading so much about blogging.
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You know what I realized? That ain’t me. That’s not who I am trying to be. That’s not the work I am pulled to do. I appreciate the people that do. I click on the “5 Ways to Store Fresh Parsley” article like everyone else. I love a blog that I can scroll quickly through because they have the headlines formatted so beautifully that I can find out quickly the “10 Signs You Might Be Depressed”. (Spoiler alert… I was… a lot… and I will be again.)
As a self-proclaimed knowledge seeker, I can tell you that there is a pitfall to having so much information at our fingertips. It’s easier than ever to get wrapped up in finding out How-to instead of Being. It’s so easy to get lost trying to figure out who and what and how.
So many people are trying to share their story and their accomplishments to help others along the way. It’s so damn easy to overload yourself with all of that. I did it. It felt like its own addiction. I was addicted to getting the answers. And that’s when I stopped cold turkey. Because I know a special truth.
The answers I seek live inside me.
You can find some direction out in the world. But to know something deeply, you have to look inside of yourself.
At the end of each day when I close my eyes, there is only me. I am the one that I have to be accountable to. I am the one that has to live with every single decision I make. Not Tanya. Not the boys. Not my friends. Not you beautiful reader. Me. I have to live a life that I feel good about. I have to find peace inside of myself. I have to love me in all of my greatness and garbage. And the same is true for you.
To me, that’s what doing the most right thing is really about.
It’s making the choice that I can feel good about in the deepest part of my heart.
It’s creating a life that can fill that big empty void I felt at the Winter Solstice party.
It’s a complete way of being in the world.
It’s about making decisions with the food I put into my body. What I watch on television. What I read. Who I spend time with.
It’s about standing up for all of humanity.
It’s about actually loving thy damn neighbor even when all that means is a smile or a wave.
It’s accepting that there is no perfect way to live in this world and bathing in the freedom of that truth.
I will never be able to do anything to prove my value to the Universe because I don’t need to. Sure some people may want you to prove your value to them, but dear friend, those people do not have your best interest in their mind.