On Spring Cleaning.

The last few weeks for me have been a bit tougher on my emotions than I would like to admit. I’ve been having a hard time keeping positive about certain aspects of my current lifestyle and I let them make me feel stuck.

Stuck inside these walls.

Stuck with a sponge in one hand and a vacuum in the other.

Stuck not knowing what I want or what I need or what to do.

Just stuck, in an ugly place that left me feeling exhausted and had me at the edge of tears more often than is characteristic for me. It wasn’t pleasant for me or Eric, and I could sense the growing impatience for me, from the both of us, and I could feel a perpetual knot of discomfort and fear and awkwardness in the pit of my stomach. This wasn’t what I wanted.

And so I wrote and cried to myself and reread it and read your words of comfort and understanding and encouragement and I realized it…

This is completely my choice.

I’m choosing to look at certain circumstances of my current lifestyle as bad, uncomfortable, not what I want, instead of taking full advantage of them and living loud and proud and sucking up as much life as I can.

Why?

Because it’s so different. It’s outside of the realm of the practical, the normal, the standard – all invisible bars which I have always denounced. Expectations that I said I would never subscribe to living by; only living up to my own expectations count in this life.

My own.

And my expectations?

To choose to wake up in a good mood and keep that mood throughout the day.

To laugh as much in one day as is humanly possible.

To create things with written words, paints, pencils, seeds, spoken word (or the sung word – even if I’m not at all good at it), and daydreams.

To stop choosing to be sad and miserable and lonely and realize that there is a world at my fingertips, outside my door, inside my heart, mind and soul.

To know that there is absolutely no reason for me to be bored or feel unproductive – I have a laptop, paper, huge piles of art media, books and my imagination, personality and feelings; a world that is endlessly inspiring.

To realize that the writers I admire, the ones that are turning their typed words into new lives, jobs, dreams come true aren’t just lucky; they fought to make this happen. They braved the looks, the disapproval, the confusion, the potential to fall on their faces and they acted anyway. They acted on passion and courage and love, and I can too.

To remember to learn everyday; the mind is as important a muscle as any other.

To stay aware of and start acting on my wants, desires, needs and stop acting on fear, insecurity and the need to please others before myself.

To love myself, inside and out, and to recognize all the beauty in me and not shy away from it, dull it down, or be afraid of it.

To grasp the fact that what I have to give, however unpractical, abnormal, or as far from the standard as is possible, is valuable and worthwhile and meaningful.

To live life as a major player, the star, and not some sidelined extra. I’m the only person I have to answer to and I will forever wake up and go to sleep with me, and it matters that I lived large, and boldly, and authentically, hungry for all that life has to give.

And how much would it take to live up to these expectations? I mean really?

All I can think of is just being myself; boldly, wildly, authentically, without apologies but with all the hunger and passion and sparkle that I can. Just being the person that I know I am, the person that I hide, and dumb down, and put after so many other people and things.

And I have all that I need – here – and I don’t need to come up with anymore excuses, or bad moods, or expectations that aren’t my own to keep me from living the life I want; right now, right here.

So here’s to spring cleaning out the negative and putting the most important things first – myself.