2021 the year of ehhhhh

 How do we feel about 2021?

In some ways it was a kick ass year for me. Made it through homeschooling. Got kids back in school, readjusted to life with peers and homework. Got several new amazing clients. Went on a great summer vacation, visited my sister in Tacoma. Read and grew and taught and laughed and joined and quit Match.com about three times and then got a dog. 

In other ways I floundered, pushing into new business territory, flailing around, and feeling out of my league. Wrestled with anxiety. Botched some relationships. You know. It's just. I. It is cloudy and snowing in spurts. My dog is sleeping by the front door. The fire is going in the hearth. Listening to melancholy music by Bon Iver. And just. 

What is it?

This year was weird. I guess I don't know how I feel about it. 

I am definitely stronger. I am definitely more assured of myself. I am definitely more content. So. I guess on the whole, good? 

What say you? 

 

i just...

This is where I am lately. I just...

I...I just...

I got nothing.

I've been playing the piano just now. I am kind of a hack. I pick out tunes. The girls and baby are delighted. I pick and peck and sing and it sounds very nice and all. But I am a hack. I can't read music, not fluently anyway. I can't play Chopin or Bach.

I can fake it.  That's it.

I feel like that is me in a lot of areas. Painting. I can do a decent little oil painting. It looks nice and all but, you know, nothing special.

Writing. I have had some nice ideas. Maybe one of them will sell one day. For now its a collection of words that make me laugh and smile and, yes, cry.

This blog is kinda the same space. Lately anyway. Some nice pictures. Some clever words. I think of something nice to point out. Or I say something sad, but relateable, or stressful, but something we all know.

But that isn't where I am right now.

Right now my world is falling apart. And I cant see the sky or the earth or anything solid except for four little beings who love me and need me to keep it together. And the days are very ordinary for a falling apart world. I lose my keys. I spill my coffee. I make mac and cheese and do laundry and pull dirty socks out of the toy bin and settle squabbles and answer phone calls and drive to the dentist and work and read Goodnight Moon three times in a row and say prayers and smooth tired brows and plaster on bandaids and "use your inside voice" and "can you please be kind to your sister" and "I said no more i-Pad today!"

And all of it. But yes. Right now I am in the sorting phase. Sorting out all the broken pieces. What goes where. What doesn't fit anymore. What needs sanded down and refinished. And yet still the mac and cheese and squabbles and lawn mowing and spilled coffee all still happens. Funny, that.

 Such a perplexing place to be in, at 41, with four kids. And yet. There you have it. It is what it is.

I just...

But the more I share, the more I let myself be vulnerable, the more I hear from others, in quiet messages and emails and texts. You too? Yes. Me too. And. Dammit it's hard.

Like Brene Brown has said though, it isn't some cliched midlife crisis we are all feeling, rather, it's an unraveling, a great pull toward authenticity. To live the life you were meant to live. To live in truth. To live without fear. To live in authenticity to the life you were called to live.

So. I look at my unraveled pieces of my past life. And I sit in the Midwestern late summer sunshine and pick tomatoes and try to figure it all out. And then, sometimes, I just put the pieces down, take the kids to the park, and think, maybe all the pieces are right here. And they are perfectly imperfect. And holy because of it. And someday I will rise again. Not new and shiny. Not like that. Ravaged. Survivor of the storm. In anticipation of the next one, for they will also come because, guys. THIS IS LIFE. Storms. Heart ache. Heart break. Over and over. There is no end of the rainbow perfection. That's a myth. And it sets us up for so much disappointment and resentment and anger at the world. But BUT BUT BUT there are moments of pure beauty in it all. Peace too. And all of it? Its all so damn worth it.

And we come out of that refining fire. And I will. Stronger. Wiser. More me.

now we are six - little green edition

When I was One,

I had just begun.

When I was Two,

I was nearly new.

When I was Three

I was hardly me.

 When I was Four,

I was not much more.

When I was Five,

I was just alive.

But now I am Six,

I'm as clever as clever,

So I think I'll be six now for ever and ever.