It's Pushing Me

It's at these times, after dragging myself out of bed in the early hours of the morning to go running and having now returned to sitting in my office with my glasses on my face and a full cup of coffee in my Trail Boss mug with Wynona {thanks to my new obsession since the concert} playing in the background while clicking through picture after picture editing them to give them the vibe, that I feel like myself.  My nerdy self.  And when I have a little break after every ten pictures or so, I feel the pull to write.  The ideas traveling from my creatively stimulated brain down through my fingers into the typed words. 

Sometimes I share the things I write.  Sometimes they are just for me.  Either way, I'm discovering writing is vital to my being.  It's healing.  I haven't been spending enough time fueling my fire and it's time to get back to being me.  The me that feels comfortable being at home.  By myself.  Without plans.  The me that used to stand in her dining room on the way to change clothes from the washer to the dryer saying out loud, "I love my life."  

Because there was a day I really did that...stopped in my tracks with the feeling of being so content and happy and like I had finally figured it out.  And I miss being there.

Transition stages have a tendency to bring out the anxiety in me.  When I first went to college, I was a hot mess.  When I graduated college, I was a hot mess.  When I started my first teaching job in the middle of the year with two days to get my classroom ready, I was a hot mess.  Then, I spent the last four years in a relatively comfortable way.  Other than moving more than necessary, which doesn't really throw me off my game because everything is put away before it touches the floor anyway, I was a settled being.

In the last year I have changed.  Immensely.  Not even sure if that word can encompass the metamorphosis.  I think my brain is catching up with all of that change and it's throwing me into a state of hot mess.  Well, what I consider to be a hot mess.  My idea of hot mess is probably not the same as most because I am a perfectionist.  It's not like I'm walking around not showered or picking at my skin or struggling at my job or laying in bed all day or anything wacko like that.  I'm still rocking life and loving my job and wearing jewelry and doing my hair.  I just don't always have that comfortable and settled feeling going on.

It needs to be that way right now.  I get that.  Because it's pushing me.  Pushing me to figure some things out.  Pushing me to the next stage in my life.  But transitions are rough.  They just are.     

 

I hope that soon I will be stopped in my tracks when I am folding a blanket in my living room by the need to say, out loud, "I love my life."

With every small moment I notice.  With every picture I capture.  With every song I listen to.  With every stride my running shoes take.  With every ridiculous statement that comes out of my mouth.  With every laugh that leaves my lips.  With every word I write.  I feel closer.  Closer to being myself.  A changed self of course, because that is what happens when we transition, but still...myself.     

When I was taking these pictures of Sister Pister and her horse earlier this fall, I was not feeling it.  Was not feeling creative and I couldn't find my groove.  I told her we would have to try again another evening because I just couldn't get there.  To that place of things clicking.

And then we started walking back to the farm, down the gravel road from the abandoned homestead we had been traipsing around in, and I caught it. 

Caught sight of the sunset light and said to my sister, "Stop.  It's right here.  We found it."  As I started clicking my camera, I felt my insides start clicking right along with the shutter.  I had found it.  Found the groove. 

I can't help but think I am right there right now in my life.  On that gravel road.  About to say, "Stop.  It's right here.  You found it."

If we would have kept walking back to the farm and given up that evening, we would have missed these moments.  The moments between a girl and her horse with the sun playing fiddle in the background. 

The moments which will now forever be captured in memory.  Because we didn't pack it up at the onset of not feeling it.  Push.  Sometimes I have to push through the uncomfortable so I don't miss out on the good stuff coming around the bend.