I just realized somewhere down the line that I've had this blog for an awfully long while. When I went into this project it was to achieve crossing off 101 things in 1001 days. I've managed to cross a lot of things off my list, most recently indulging in an Eaton Mess which is something I didn't get the first time I ate a week of British food (in Britain).
In a way, my life is much like an Eaton mess. It's something I've waited a long time to try, I had forgotten about, and the best bits are hidden. For those of my friends who have been following my Facebook posts looking on the outside it seems like my travels are filled with whipped cream and mmmm…. strawberries. But those aren't the best bits.
The best bits of me are the hidden parts. The parts that keep on going even when I feel sad and lonely. When I write long messages to my friends after several bottles of cheap wine looking for answers about the relationships in my life. When I decide that I don't, in fact, want to do anything in my life but stay alone in my apartment eating bread which is quite possible in Italy.
When I'm stuck and I feel like a failure because I can't create anything. When the vision of myself coming back from Europe looking skinny and strong and tanned vanishes because I didn't manage to do those push-ups everyday after all. When all I can see is the fact that I'm sick and the weather sucks and I'm running out of money, and not the gratitude of where I am and what I am doing.
Those are the dark parts of life, the chocolate chips, if you're still trying to follow my spontaneous metaphor. Still, as I mention these dark parts they seem very superficial. That's what they look like to the outside person. They look like a bout of good exercise and a bottle of good wine will "fix" the blues in life. Not everyone has the blues and the people who have it don't talk about it. Some people just accept the dark clouds over their heads like the crummy English weather.
I've asked most of my close friends this question at some point in our lives, "when you're driving, do you ever feel like you just want to let go of the wheel and let it go?" The answer has always been yes.
How many people have had that thought? But you don't act on it. You push it to the side and you order your favourite Starbucks and for a minute you're blissfully happy and you forget all about the awkward conversation.
That line - it's the only way I can describe it. It's like someone takes a grey magic marker and colours through your life. It moves slowly through our lives and we don't know what it wants, when it will come, or what we can do about it. That line is what I don't understand about life. Sometimes it's so thick that you can't move. Sometimes it's so thin, it's just a memory of a bad dream you had ages ago.
You can distract yourself from it and there are many techniques to do that like going for a run, eating healthy, getting involved in the community, and adopting a pet. Make a list of 101 things you want to accomplish and write about them. Make yourself a better person.
My struggle is my compulsion to find that line and tie myself up in it. It's been years and I still can't let it go like a crazy ex-girlfriend who won't stop calling her ex. When it comes into my life I like to sit with it in a room with a bottle of wine and indulge it. That's not a healthy relationship. When it's not there, I panic and wonder when I can expect it.
Status Update
By Humans of New York
When you're feeling down, it's so tempting to focus on your sadness: you wonder why you're sad, you hate that you're sad, you wish you weren't sad. It's completely natural to do this. But it's the wrong way to be. No matter how smart you are-- you will never change a bad mood by thinking about it. You will only magnify it.
Instead focus on your behavior. Focus on what you can change. Go outside. Exercise. Quit isolating yourself. Interact with friends and family. Accomplish things. Your mind will reward you with happiness.
It is so tough to change your behavior if you are feeling depressed. But it's the only way. Don't say: "I'll act differently when I feel better."
Act differently, and you will feel better.
Now I see more. I see that this line is just the weather. It is there and we can talk about it and we can tuck into a good book when it's raining and that's ok. We can also go out and help other people and that will probably make you feel better. Me, at least. I realize how I feel after I have a class of students - I help them. It makes me feel giddy. I'm good at a lot of things I didn't know that I was good at before I tried.
A lot of my life I spent not trying things. I spent it waiting for things to find me, waiting for me to be spontaneously good at something or waiting to find that "thing" that everyone else is looking for… you know the elusive "thing" you're going to have to find if you're ever happy and then do it for the rest of your life. I didn't do a lot of things because I thought I wasn't good enough at them. I didn't travel because I didn't have anyone to go with. I didn't go to Europe because I didn't speak another language. Instead, I expected less from myself and it slowly stopped the funnel of creativity in my life.
I was never a "one thing" person. As a child I loved change more than challenges. I was not tenacious. I would rather do 7 projects 80% right than 1 project 100% right. Some people may disagree. I am messy. But it's comfortable for me to change and that's just me. It's not "finding yourself" to understand yourself. The reason you start to "find yourself" when you're older is that you do enough stuff in your life to be able to attach patterns to your actions. There's no mysterious brain wave that opens up and gives your answers.
When you're in your 20's you look at your parents. You start to see them as human and you think: that's why I'm like that. You get some background. You start to hear about things your family did. People start to divorce. You see failure and success. When you're 30 you've lived enough to have your own failure and your own success. You've done stuff on your own. Maybe you have a family. Patterns start to emerge and you can see what you're like, how you're coping. This is the stage where you need to take responsibility and accept that you are, in fact, responsible for yourself.
I used to dance in this crazy way when I was in my early 20's. My friends would be really embarrassed because I'd move my hips too much. It just felt right to me. I took some belly dancing classes and I solidified 3 good moves. Now everyone loves my dancing and says they wish they could dance like me. I still just have 3 moves but I'm learning more.
It took me 10 years and living in another country to realize that the people who were my friends and commenting on my dancing were just scared and didn't know how to dance like everyone else. Remember the hip sway, dancing in a circle, looking at everyone else?
At 30 years old, I'm learning how to dance. I'm not doing it to "find my thing" or to make a career out of it. I'm doing it because it makes me happy. I'm doing it because I realize that I can be tenacious after all, it makes me feel uncomfortable, but that's not a bad thing. There is no good or bad in life, there's just choice.
