You ever hear words and they just… go right through you? A second before you were a different person and now there’s something totally different in your world just because of a simple statement? No? Alright then.
I’m weird I know but I have these moments when the most random comments can trigger an absolute and total shift of my personal axis and rotation around whatever is my biggest priority or belief about life. I can bore you with more of those events later but the most recent phrase that cut me down and made me think was those three up in the title. “Share Your Story.”
I’ve heard them a million times before. They’ve been said to me in that order by professors, classmates, motivational speakers, family…. It was always just a cliche. A yeah whatever, maybe when I actually have something INTERESTING to share, get off my back kind of statement. For me, the stories that were worth sharing were the ones that captivated my imagination. The amazing quests that involved magic and damsels, mythical creatures and great adventures. That was something readers might actually be interested in; NOT how I paid my bills this month.
But for some reason I feel… Compelled to write about those boring bits now. I still don’t know what I’ll write. And for my fans of the TLDR you can totally stop here. But I’m guessing you have already. And no worries. I won’t be offended if you skip these posts. Most people do. It’s all good.
Now for another cliche. New Years Resolutions.
I didn’t set any.
Lame right? I’ve seen SO MANY posts about how to and what to and what I did and be like me and on and on and on and on…. Too much and my head exploded.
Mostly I just didn’t see the point. 100% honesty here. Last year I set what I thought were some reasonable goals. I was going to submit a song to be published, participate in nanowrimo, prepare for nanowrimo by outlining and researching in October, and getting my music studio off the ground.
Well… I submitted a song. A song I mad dash wrote the day before the deadline and posted to the contest at 11:50 PM. Deadline was 12. But I did it. And I coasted for a week. But then?
Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Poof.
I could have. I had time. But I also procrastinated and found excellent excuses, and was just plain lazy. So nothing happened. Life just proceeded as normal and before I knew it New Years Eve was here and I was coming up blank.
For a while I tried. I tried to think of stretch goals. I tried to think of personal advancement, physical well being, etc. etc, insert your favorite catch phrase here. It just wasn’t coming.
So… I stopped. I decided if there was nothing I could make myself do then I wasn’t going to lie to myself. And I just stopped.
It could be honesty and being true to myself. Maybe that system doesn’t work for me and now I’m allowing myself the freedom to find a new one. It could also be cowardice and laziness. I could just be looking for a way not to blame myself and get my butt in gear. But that’s OK.
I haven’t planned a lot lately and I’m right now I have to be comfortable with that. There’s just no way to plan. I don’t even know where I’m going to live in the next three months or where I’m going to work or what I’m going to do. I have absolutely no idea what my future holds. And rather than try to force it into a mold of what I think might happen I just decided to let the curve balls come and I’ll see where they take me.
It’s both freeing and stressful. It relieves panic attacks and creates them. It isn’t black or white but one of those mucky, depends on the day, gray colors that you can’t quite make out. But it’s what I have. And hey. I’ve written two posts since then. So maybe there’s something to it. Maybe not.. Right now that’s all I got for you.
Life is nothing short of strange isn’t it?
