At the top of the stats page for my blog, it says “Days, Weeks, Months, Years”. What an arbitrary way in which to measure time! To me right now attempting to determine what can be done in a day, a week, a month, a year, is both confusing and confounding. When I look at how my last day, week, month, year have happened, I am amazed at how much and how little things have changed.
In the last 24 hours (day), I FINALLY had a job interview. This is very good for the ego, as I have been without gainful employment for 2 months now. That said, today I worked with my cousin to clarify my thoughts and feelings about my career and made some empowering decisions. A day can be a lifetime sometimes.
In the last sennight (ah, how I love archaic terms), I have been brought to tears by the sadness and the joy on the screen during a television show I have become addicted to, I have read complete trash for the first time in months and I have hibernated due to our bitter, bitter cold. I have watched the new puppy become more mature and able to control his potty habits and I have found that yes, I can spend very little money and still feed my family quite well. I have been disgusted by politics and while on a walk down memory lane, I have cried again for a friend who died years ago. I have started to crawl out of the darkest part of my current depression and am seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.
In the past month, I have discovered that the job I thought was a sure thing was in fact non-existent. I have, once again, realized how easily I can make a bad decision and also realized that yes, this too will pass. I have had to pull out the deepest reserves of optimism I possess and I have fought hard to battle the darkness that is never as far away as I would like it. I have started a list of things I want to accomplish in the next few months and I have discovered just how little material things mean to me these days. This, candidly, has been very freeing.
And in the last year, my life has turned around 180 degrees. From suburban homeowner to urban renter, from being overworked to not working at all, from hating every day to wondering what each day will bring, I am so different now than I was a year ago. And yet . . .
And yet I am still myself inside, and am getting closer to the truth of who my authentic self really is. Stripped of the extraneous “stuff”, I find I am good with being simpler, being slower, being less and being *about* less. I have learned the hard way what really matters, and it is nothing you can find on a piece of paper anywhere, it is nothing that you can see, touch, hear or taste. You can only feel it in your heart and in your soul, and it is impossible for it to be taken from you.
“The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them — words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they’re brought out. But it’s more than that, isn’t it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you’ve said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That’s the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear.” Stephen King, Different Seasons
stillalive2013 