Don't Borrow Trouble...or Stress, for that Matter!

Things are currently better for me than they’ve been at any point in the last year. The thing I was waiting on came through for me in the best way possible, and I’m now firmly on the path to wherever my new life is going to take me—with the tools to be successful every step of the way. More importantly, however, is the fact that I can actually see the damn road and even, if I squint my eyes, look up ahead into the future a bit. This, as anyone who has been reading this blog will know by now, is a huge relief for me. Gigantic. Epic, even.

If I needed any proof about how much happier my soul is when it has direction, I got it the first night after I heard my good news. I slept, through the night, without any artificial help, for the first time in almost 11 months. Then I did it again the next night. And the next. And the next. That’s right, my insomnia has disappeared into thin air. Poof!

It is amazing what a good night’s sleep will do for your outlook on life. I’d forgotten. But now that I’ve been reintroduced to the concept, I’ll be damned if I’m going to let anything snatch it away from me again! Unfortunately, there are still one or two lingering things from my old life infringing on my ability to ride off into the rising sun of my new life. I’m headed in the right direction, but I have a couple of unwanted stowaways in my luggage. These stowaways seem determined to peck away at my fledgling happiness (I’m just full of metaphors today, folks!), and they might be successful—if they were dealing with the old me. But they’re not. They’re up against the new me, the one who has walked through hell (not a metaphor) and come out the other end alive. The new me is stronger, re-forged by adversity and misery and all the things that make you stronger if they don’t kill you.

Also, the new me has slept. Seriously, I can’t even tell you how glorious that is after all this time.

So, right, stowaways. They can take a hike. For the most part, they’re things I have very little control over at this point. So, why let them stress me out? Yes, I want them done and gone, but it’s just not happening right now. I’m not ignoring them; I’m quite aware of their presence. I’m simply choosing to keep them at arm’s length for the duration of their stay with me. Frankly, I’ve been through worse. It’s incredible the way my outlook on life’s struggles has shifted over the last year. I have a feeling it’s going to take a lot more to faze me from now on. Because after everything I’ve been through, it’s simply not worth it to take even one baby step back into the darkness. I know what’s back there, and it’s nothing good. These days, I’m all about the light. And the sleep.

Lesson of the Day: Step into the light. And get some sleep!

Clean Slate

I never, ever thought that I would be starting over at this stage of my life. I had it all figured out. Career, education, family…everything was lined up and a bright future was on the horizon. My goals, dreams, aspirations—all coming together.

Until, suddenly, they weren’t.

Nine months ago my life went to hell in the space of 24 hours, and I watched all my dreams, all my hopes for my life, collapse around me. I was devastated. I didn’t know how I was going to make it through the day, much less a week, or a month, or the indefinite amount of time it was going to take to come up with an entirely new future for myself. It seemed impossible. And, in those first dark months, I wasn’t sure I even had enough left in me to try.

But human nature is a powerful thing, and it has always been my nature to persevere. So, that’s what I did. Through the horrible days and the unbearable nights, through hours when I felt so alone I could only curl up on the floor and cry, through minutes when it literally felt like my heart was tearing its way through my chest because even it couldn’t take the pain anymore…I stuck it out. It wasn’t always pretty, and it sure as hell wasn’t easy, and some days I spent every second clawing my way to a goal I couldn’t even visualize yet, but here I am. I may not be whole, but I managed to hold on to all the pieces I need to put myself back together. I may have scars, but that only means that the wounds are healing. And I don’t think I’ll ever be able to describe myself as naïve again, but knowledge is, and always has been, power.

So here I sit, situations finally resolved, endings finally written, and a blank slate before me. It’s a tiring thought, that I now have to rewrite the story of my future—luckily, stories are kind of my thing. The Reinvention Project is nowhere complete, but I can now add the element of freedom to my quest. No longer tied to my past, there’s nothing holding me back. It’s scary, but I’ve always enjoyed a challenge. The possibilities are limitless; with no one and nothing else to take into consideration, I can, quite seriously, do whatever I want with my life. I have never been in this position before, and I’m looking forward to seeing what I come up with.

I’m still weary, I’m still sad, I’m still healing—but with the last nine months as proof that I can get through anything, I have hope. And hope, as Pandora will tell you, can make all the difference in the world. It’s time to pick up my pen and get to work.

Lesson of the Day: It’s a new dawn, it’s a new day, it’s a new life.

Time for a Change

It has been nearly four months since I started The Reinvention Project. It seems like such a short amount of time, and in the grand scheme of what I'm trying to accomplish I suppose it is. Still, I can say quite confidently that, for all the potholes (and sometimes craters) I've encountered so far, I have made progress along the road I chose on New Year's Eve.

I want to take the opportunity to thank everyone who has come across this humble blog. When I began I wasn't sure if anyone besides a few friends would check it out, and I never cease to be amazed (and thrilled!) when yet another follower signs on, another comment hits my inbox, or another word of encouragement comes to me from across the country. I have solid evidence that the Project is doing exactly what I dared hope it would do: making a difference. It may be a small difference, and it may be a few people, but to hear even one person say they have been bolstered by my words makes me feel like everything I'm going through can be given a positive purpose. That feeling, for me, is its own form of therapy.

I have, as Robert Frost put so eloquently, "miles to go before I sleep." But thanks to this blog, and everyone who’s taken the time to share it with me, I no longer feel like I'm traveling that road alone.

Lesson of the Day: We’re never as alone as we think we are.

Sorting Out My Priorities

It has been, to put it mildly, a rough few weeks. A lot of that waiting I talked about a few posts ago took a giant step forward, and instead of being relieved I found myself relapsing into a depressive episode on a level I honestly thought I was beyond. So, I can now personally attest to another truth about depression: it is entirely possible to experience a relapse. (For more information on depression, see my January 28, 2010 post, Taking Down Depression.) No wonder it’s known to be such an insidious illness.

At any rate, there has been a lot of “just making it through” going on, and that hasn’t left me with either the energy or desire for much of anything else. The tactics I’ve been using for the last six months to keep my head on straight aren’t as effective as they used to be. My patience for all this *waves arms around wildly* is waning. It’s time to step up The Reinvention Project. I’ve decided to try to think a bit further into the future; to look to the ever-nebulous “other side” I will supposedly come out on when everything making my life a whirlwind of discontent finally resolves itself. If I can visualize this new life of mine, maybe it will be easier to hold out for it. To that end, I decided to make a list.

I jumped on to http://www.tadalist.com/, a lovely website devoted to list-making, and created the following:

Adventures for 2010
~ hot air balloon ride
~ skydiving on my birthday
~ hiking to waterfalls in the spring
~ run three 5Ks
~ join a writers group

The first three items are things I’ve been dying to do for years, and the opportunities just didn’t present themselves in my old life (I have a specific state park in mind for the hiking). The last two items are geared towards personal improvement for the benefit of my new life. The important thing about this list is that each thing is completely do-able this year. Only the first two items cost any significant amount of money, and neither cost is prohibitive.

One of the facets of my new life that I’m most eager to incorporate is not waiting so long to do the things I truly want to do. One of the hard lessons I’ve learned is that life is unpredictable. You can have it all planned out one day, and not know which way is up the next. Life itself will get in the way of you doing any actual living if you let it. As I am rebuilding from the ground up, now seems like the perfect time to make sure that doesn’t happen anymore. The things I want to do, the adventures I want to have, are going to take a much higher priority in my new life. That knowledge is getting me through when other distractions fail.

The above list-in-progress will seem inane to most people, I imagine. Plenty of people couldn’t care less about waterfalls, and relatively few have the urge to jump out of a perfectly good airplane. But are you prepared to deny that you have such a list in the back of your mind? If you sat down right now with a pen and paper, what small things have you been dying to do, or try, or see, that you keep putting off? Forget about expensive dream vacations (Rome is on my personal long-term wish list) or the desire to change careers. Think smaller. Is there a play you want to see? A favorite band in concert? Have you always wanted to try a particular craft? Maybe you have a secret desire to try an online computer game. Or go to a tasting at a local winery.

You think about these things from time to time, and each time you think to yourself, “Someday soon I’m actually going to make this happen. Maybe next month. Maybe next year.” But soon never seems to arrive, and the months pass, and the years pass, and life gets in the way of all your best intentions. It happens to us all. My list has been with me for years. But you know what? Six months ago that list was longer. I’ve already begun to check things off. And each checkmark is another completion of something important to me. Something that makes my life richer, more colorful. And isn’t that the point of life, after all? To live it?

Lesson of the Day: Life is for living. Make it happen.

Hoping for the Best, Preparing for the Worst

My life over the last five months has seemed like an absurd string of worst-case scenarios. As a result, I now find myself rewired to immediately come up with the worst possible outcome for a given situation. While this might not seem like the best disposition for someone currently prone to episodes of depression, I find it serving a constructive purpose in spite of the less pleasant effects of raising my blood pressure and making me cry at random intervals.

I can prepare! I can come up with Plan B and C and go on down the line for as long as my pessimism (or perhaps just realism at this point) holds out. Now that I have no naïve illusions that the worst can’t possibly happen to me, I can get down to the business of making sure the worst doesn’t carve another pound of sanity from my psyche if it does come to pass.

Now if that doesn’t demonstrate my mad silver-lining-finding skills, I don’t know what does.

Lesson of the Day: Hope for peace, but wear your flak jacket!