Maybe it's just OKAY

I am a little scattered today, but stronger than usual, and feeling the urge to write about it. Maybe strong isn’t the right word. Whole? Present? Complete? I don’t know. Maybe it’s just OKAY. So, bear with me loyal legions of blog readers. This shit's happening. 

I am feeling all kinds of poetic about things lately. It's probably the new year and all the talk about resolutions and change and looking back on the past and blah blah blah. I posted a photo today on Instagram for "Throw Back Thursday" (or also know by me as TURN BACK TIIIIME). 

It's a very random photo, but for some reason it just means so much to me. It's from 2012, right at the beginning of when everything fell apart. I'm sure to me back then, doing things like putting the pajamas on the kids was a huge task. In fact, I know it was. But this photo is the three of us. Me looking at Sam, Sam looking at Abe (who is taking the picture), and Abe looking at us. The three of us. Just getting through it. Sort of silly, but there you go.

Then, today, I was at work in a meeting ... nothing special or weird or odd. I was just sitting there, looking out the window at the cold and the snow, and a feeling came over me. It was a feeling that I haven't felt in awhile, and of course instantly I was trying to figure out what it was. I was not panicked or stressed, or filled with anxiety. It was a feeling I haven't felt in, oh, I don’t know years? You guys, I think it's being OKAY. And, me being the freak that I am, was wondering WHY? Why am I feeling like this all of the sudden? What’s different? I don’t know. Or maybe I do? 

There’s definitely been a shift. Maybe it’s my brain deciding to make the shift, but I have decided I am going to be positive. And I know I have said this a million times – at least a few on this blog, and probably a million to my friends, and in my head, but the thing that makes it different this time is that I finally feel I have the strength to do it. Because, when everyone says, “Positive thinking is just a choice” I sort of think it’s bullshit. Because sometimes you are just so worn down and beat down by life – by outside factors that you can’t control – that it makes it hard to just “Be Positive.” 

Now, I’m not saying that life is wonderful and happy and sunshine is coming out of my ass, but I am saying that I feel a little lighter. And I’ve smiled a little more. Fake it till you make it. I know it’s all work, and there's still a lot of work to be done. It’s amazing to me how hard I have had to work to just stay sane. To get up in the morning and put my pants on. There have been days where I pat myself on the back for just making it to work and brushing my damn hair. But it’s not every day, and I keep going, mostly because I have to, and also because I have people in my life that make me laugh, and let me vent, and whom I know love me no matter what. That always helps. But, man. The work. There’s a lot. 

A couple things for the 10 people that read this --

THIS article – so good. This is something I am trying to work on as an ultra-sensitive person who admittedly gives way too many fucks about way too many things:
http://markmanson.net/not-giving-a-fuck

"Because when we give too many fucks, when we choose to give a fuck about everything, then we feel as though we are perpetually entitled to feel comfortable and happy at all times, that’s when life fucks us."

(Pardon the language.  See, was I just giving a fuck there? Yep.)

And also this which I just really liked:

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer. | Rainer Maria Rilke