First of all, I’ve chosen to arrange my posts from oldest to newest. This is more of a journal to be read from beginning to end. Like a book. My hope is to document some things in my life, even parts of my whole life that have taken place and caused me to change. Or, to become who I am today. There are things I thought would never happen and things I look back on for perspective as to how I got where I am today. I thought it might be helpful for me. Maybe it would be helpful to you too.
Although it’s been a process, I remember a moment not long ago that I decided my life needed to change in order to move forward. It’s not that my life wasn’t moving. It was pretty darn good and exciting really. I just suddenly came to a loop where I was taken back to a younger me. A me who hadn’t moved forward. Have you ever felt that way? Like you haven’t changed a bit since around high school? Well, I decided that version of me needed to catch up or I would repeat the behavior over and over. And, at my age this was such a huge step back in time I simply could not let it dictate the quality of my life from here on. Not after all these years. Nope. Unacceptable.
My joy in life and the hard work I’ve put toward getting to where I am now is much too valuable for me to just revert back to some child-like version of myself. I needed to move forward and grow. Along with that I felt I also needed to look at where I came from. I’ve always been reflective on my past, beginning with childhood. I thought it was all so good. And it was. But, as I get older I’m beginning to question the total goodness of it. Was I being honest about it? Was there darkness in there that has held me back? What was my past really made up of? What is the present leading to and how can I direct it better? What do I really want my future to look like? How can I make sense of it and use the knowledge?
At some point, not in the beginning of this journey but around the middle, I discovered a program called “Self Authoring” and signed up. I wrote over 17,000 words on my past, present and future using their guidelines. It was a good exercise. It’s not what this blog is about, but it sure helped me understand myself better and map out my life a bit. You can read about that program here Self Authoring Suite.
Well, I’ll leave it here for now and just say this; life can be hard and, therefore, seemingly without happiness, contentment or joy. It can also be hard and full of joy. What I’m saying is, life is hard. Happiness is a choice. I’ve made that choice. I hope you have too.