Small Disclaimer: this post might not make any sense. I am okay with that.
The theme of my life this summer has been "Letting go... (and receiving more)". Letting go of... possessions, letting go of career, of the security of steady income. Letting go of expectations, and letting go of attachments or concerns about the ways that others see me, judge me, fail to fall madly in love with me. But in return, I have been receiving so much more...
The process of letting go of possessions has been particularly challenging. It has been happening in stages. There is more than a bit of the hoarder in me... hoarding Future Potential Art Projects and never getting around to the doing. But in getting rid of more and more baggage, I feel immensely free. Free to re-create my self, my destiny, to become the vision of myself that I see in my dreams. And let me tell you, that woman in my dreams... she is really something.
Letting go of clutter. Getting rid of fluff... Stripping myself down to the core marrow of identity and self and soul. Working on letting go of this shiftless, itchy dissatisfaction with a hundred small parts of my life that don't quite fit... Moving towards action, satisfaction, fulfillment. Moving towards a quiet stillness of being content with myself and confident on my path.
Breathe.
They tell me it is the Return of my Saturn... I've never been a huge astrology buff, but again and again people would pause in mid-conversation with me and say, "oh yeah, you're in your Saturn Returns...". Excuse me? And just what the effing eff is a Saturn Returns?
So here's an outline of the whole shebang in a nutshell:
In addition to all this Saturn stuff that I've been hearing about, my 28th birthday was on a Full Moon. I didn't end up doing anything particularly special for it, but it felt like a Big Deal at the time. It felt like... time to work on becoming that glorious woman I see in my dreams... That was back in November last year, and that was about the time that I begun really planning how to Break Free... But even as I started thinking about shaking all that up... I was still so very stuck. Stuck in the paradigms of needing safety, security, needing STUFF and needing to play the rolls that people in my life expected me to play. The archetype of my self that I had been living out was that of a HOT MESS. Someone who's always got big ideas and lots of talk, but when it comes down to the doing, is always too tired, too overwhelmed, too just barely treading water, to ever actually commit and run with Big Things. Too much of all that will drive a person insane... and that's just where I was headed.
I spent January through March (prime seasonal affective months...) coasting through the throws of a semi-serious mental breakdown. Coming out of that time, I only really knew one thing: I had to get the hell out of town. And the process of getting out of town wasn't at all like ripping off a band-aid... it was like slowly unwinding a poorly applied bandage... layer after bloody, festering, layer... a bandage that you stuck on there in a quick moment when you didn't realize how bad the wound was, and then you just kept adding more layers on top to sop up the oozing blood... and now the wound is hot and angry, and pulling the bandage off hurts, but it hurts in that good way... the way where you know that once the bandage is off and the wound is cleaned, it will FEEL SO MUCH BETTER...
And it did feel better. I was still lost. I still kept getting all up in my own way. But getting out of the city I grew up in, embarking on the great and mythical Leaving Home For Lands Unknown, getting out into the country... (in this case, Denman Islan, BC Canada) to a place where cell phone coverage is spotty and wi-fi networks, electricity, and running water are all a luxury that many people decide they can live better without... or at least, they decide that it's not worth the money to install the infrastructure for them... It's not like all of the problems and conveniences of modern living weren't available; it's just that in that place, it was easy for me to choose to avoid them.
In that place, I could take a breath, and decide to not be overwhelmed.
Breathe.
I can decide not to be overwhelmed.
And now I'm still not sure where I'm headed, but I feel a little less lost. And I continue to work on Letting Go. Because the more I let go of, the more of myself I find. The easier it is to see the path.
And here I stand, nearing the end of the summer, staying at my sister's house and waiting for her to joyously give birth to her first baby; the first baby of its generation in our own nuclear family. I am still sore and healing from that psychic/spritual wound... but it is actually starting to heal now. Things are starting to feel less fuzzy and less hazy. I feel like less of a mess. I don't suppose I've become a more organized person, but I have drastically reduced the number of possessions with which to create messy piles and right now, that feels like a huge accomplishment. I am working to reduce the number of little undone tasks ticking away in my mind.
I'm running away from the Death By A Thousand Tiny Pinpricks. But I can't run away from the world. There are Big Things I want to accomplish and no matter where I go, the world is always there. But those Big Things will have to wait because right now I'm still healing. Right now I'm still lost, and I'm just starting to find the still and quiet place inside of being lost.
Right now I'm still learning how to breathe.
Breathe.
The theme of my life this summer has been "Letting go... (and receiving more)". Letting go of... possessions, letting go of career, of the security of steady income. Letting go of expectations, and letting go of attachments or concerns about the ways that others see me, judge me, fail to fall madly in love with me. But in return, I have been receiving so much more...
The process of letting go of possessions has been particularly challenging. It has been happening in stages. There is more than a bit of the hoarder in me... hoarding Future Potential Art Projects and never getting around to the doing. But in getting rid of more and more baggage, I feel immensely free. Free to re-create my self, my destiny, to become the vision of myself that I see in my dreams. And let me tell you, that woman in my dreams... she is really something.
Letting go of clutter. Getting rid of fluff... Stripping myself down to the core marrow of identity and self and soul. Working on letting go of this shiftless, itchy dissatisfaction with a hundred small parts of my life that don't quite fit... Moving towards action, satisfaction, fulfillment. Moving towards a quiet stillness of being content with myself and confident on my path.
Breathe.
They tell me it is the Return of my Saturn... I've never been a huge astrology buff, but again and again people would pause in mid-conversation with me and say, "oh yeah, you're in your Saturn Returns...". Excuse me? And just what the effing eff is a Saturn Returns?
Certain astrological patterns occur universally--that is, everyone gets them at approximately the same age. One of those astrological patterns is the "Saturn Return" which occurs when transiting Saturn (where it is in the sky now) returns to the same position in the zodiac which Saturn occupied when you were born. Everyone experiences a Saturn Return around age 28-30. http://www.tellmylife.com/saturnReturn30.htmOk fine, whatever. Astrology is a big, broad fortune cookie wheel of gooey fake "woo-ha". Except that as a discipline/body of knowledge, it's also gazillions of years old and uses basic human archetypes that seem to reflect common reality rather accurately... So maybe there's something useful there to give me some context and framework from which to understand this phase of my life...
So here's an outline of the whole shebang in a nutshell:
- Some people picked the right path in the first place, and at 29-ish, they just level up on responsibility and success... that was definitely not me.
- Some people actively went out searching, trying on lots of different possibilities. Most of these kids go ahead and pick something around age 30, decide to stick with it, and generally settle in...
- Some people spent their twenties fucking around and partying. And then they get to the end of their twenties and think, "holy shit, I have no Life Skills... what am I gonna DO WITH MYSELF?" They might embark on a holy quest to maintain that party indefinitely, and they might actually come out of the haze and pursue something (anything) of substance.
- And some people made a career choice early on and ran with it... Or maybe the choice made them and they went along for the ride without really thinking about it... But they've been on that path for a good long while now... long enough to know that it's not working out. "Hello, Life and Career Up Until This Point... I afraid I'm going to have to break up with you. You see, it's not you... it's me. It's just not working out... I don't really know what I'm looking for (or maybe I do...), but I do know that THIS ISN'T IT. So long, I'm headed to Bermuda [insert fantasy vacation spot] to do a little soul searching while I figure it out..."
(This list of categories is my interpretation of the description within that website linked up above.)I'd say that I'm a mixture of Option #2, leaning heavily towards Option #4. But my career path is not what I want to write about. I'm writing about what I'm DOING, right now.
In addition to all this Saturn stuff that I've been hearing about, my 28th birthday was on a Full Moon. I didn't end up doing anything particularly special for it, but it felt like a Big Deal at the time. It felt like... time to work on becoming that glorious woman I see in my dreams... That was back in November last year, and that was about the time that I begun really planning how to Break Free... But even as I started thinking about shaking all that up... I was still so very stuck. Stuck in the paradigms of needing safety, security, needing STUFF and needing to play the rolls that people in my life expected me to play. The archetype of my self that I had been living out was that of a HOT MESS. Someone who's always got big ideas and lots of talk, but when it comes down to the doing, is always too tired, too overwhelmed, too just barely treading water, to ever actually commit and run with Big Things. Too much of all that will drive a person insane... and that's just where I was headed.
I spent January through March (prime seasonal affective months...) coasting through the throws of a semi-serious mental breakdown. Coming out of that time, I only really knew one thing: I had to get the hell out of town. And the process of getting out of town wasn't at all like ripping off a band-aid... it was like slowly unwinding a poorly applied bandage... layer after bloody, festering, layer... a bandage that you stuck on there in a quick moment when you didn't realize how bad the wound was, and then you just kept adding more layers on top to sop up the oozing blood... and now the wound is hot and angry, and pulling the bandage off hurts, but it hurts in that good way... the way where you know that once the bandage is off and the wound is cleaned, it will FEEL SO MUCH BETTER...
And it did feel better. I was still lost. I still kept getting all up in my own way. But getting out of the city I grew up in, embarking on the great and mythical Leaving Home For Lands Unknown, getting out into the country... (in this case, Denman Islan, BC Canada) to a place where cell phone coverage is spotty and wi-fi networks, electricity, and running water are all a luxury that many people decide they can live better without... or at least, they decide that it's not worth the money to install the infrastructure for them... It's not like all of the problems and conveniences of modern living weren't available; it's just that in that place, it was easy for me to choose to avoid them.
In that place, I could take a breath, and decide to not be overwhelmed.
Breathe.
I can decide not to be overwhelmed.
And now I'm still not sure where I'm headed, but I feel a little less lost. And I continue to work on Letting Go. Because the more I let go of, the more of myself I find. The easier it is to see the path.
And here I stand, nearing the end of the summer, staying at my sister's house and waiting for her to joyously give birth to her first baby; the first baby of its generation in our own nuclear family. I am still sore and healing from that psychic/spritual wound... but it is actually starting to heal now. Things are starting to feel less fuzzy and less hazy. I feel like less of a mess. I don't suppose I've become a more organized person, but I have drastically reduced the number of possessions with which to create messy piles and right now, that feels like a huge accomplishment. I am working to reduce the number of little undone tasks ticking away in my mind.
I'm running away from the Death By A Thousand Tiny Pinpricks. But I can't run away from the world. There are Big Things I want to accomplish and no matter where I go, the world is always there. But those Big Things will have to wait because right now I'm still healing. Right now I'm still lost, and I'm just starting to find the still and quiet place inside of being lost.
Right now I'm still learning how to breathe.
Breathe.
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