Your life can be both messy and beautiful.
Observations on moving, breathing and being are just that. At least mine are.
This is where I think out loud.
I get to decide how I move, breathe and be.
Since 2020, I’ve been writing about things that surface when we slow down long enough to notice—perfectionism, self-love, balance, sadness, choice, uncertainty, beginnings. These aren’t prescriptions. They’re invitations to sit with what’s here and to get curious about what it might be pointing towards.
Some of them were written in the thick of a season of major change. Some were written from the other side. All of them are honest.
I took a long pause. I’m back now. New reflections are coming—and the only ones are still here because the themes don’t expire.
On the power of choice
How has January already come and gone? It feels like just yesterday when I shared my first post of the year On Beginnings, and here we are on the last Friday of the month, a fifth Friday at that.
I also don’t know how a whole year has already come and gone, either. It seems like a lifetime ago that it was January 29, 2020. And in many ways, it has been. We’re now in a #newnormal, or #nownormal, of a global pandemic that has shaken all aspects of our lives.
This time last year, I was planning my first road trip with my partner, and though a relatively new relationship, I thought it was my forever one. I was coming off the heels of an informal year-end review with my CEO, in which it was mentioned I could be her successor, so while the job was not without its challenges and concerns, I thought it was at least a long-term one. And I still had my buddy of ten years, Pedro (aka, Peter Rabbit), and though I knew his life was not infinite, I sort of hoped he’d defeat the odds.
Not four months later, all that had changed. Pedro had passed ten days after that, my relationship ended three months after that and my job three weeks after that (and COVID-19 had been declared a pandemic some time in-between)…
A reflection on possibilities
It feels like it’s been awhile since I last shared my reflections of the week. I suppose it has—looking back, it’s been three weeks since my post on sadness. While those thoughts were specific…to the end of what I had thought was the beginning of a renewed commitment…, I suppose there’s been a layer of sadness enveloping me for awhile now. I’ve experienced a lot of loss, as have we all—my relationship (now twice), my job, my pet, my sense of normalcy, even my ability to travel as I otherwise might have with this “gifted” time.
But I’ve also felt sadness with respect to the state of discourse in our society today—the sheer divisiveness in language used seemingly at all levels, across all aisles, surrounding all topics—and our inability, or sometimes refusal, to recognize our shared commonalities. As like many of us, I’ve allowed myself to become distracted by much of this, which has hindered both my direction and my momentum.
Politics aside, this election cycle has renewed my hope and sparked an optimism within me that the future is bright…