"I could plant a pretty garden, or just buy myself flowers.
Be a jet-set Friday, or Sunday hometown girl.
Is happiness on the highway, or is it parked in the driveway?
(I could love a picket fence, if it wrapped around the world.)
One heart, goin' both directions.
Am I settling up, or settling down?
Settlin' up or settlin' down."
- Miranda, Wildcard, (2019)
***
It is late 2023.
I am sitting at my kitchen island 36 days before I move.
AGAIN.
One block away from where I am.
6 blocks away from where I was.
4 blocks away from where I was before that.
I suppose you could say that I am relatively exactly where I am supposed to be, since I cannot seem to get out of a mile radius of where I have spent the past 8 years.
I have a string of Christmas lights wrapped over a ladder in my living room, because I've already moved all the blankets that were decoratively positioned for colour and texture to make it all look just right.
My bed has two pillows because the other two are already on the floor of my new space to be a placeholder of where the bed is going to go. (Gotta make sure the movers get it right.)
As I sit and look around me, I realize that when you move all that you do not need, you are left with exactly what is most important to you.
Which isn't much.
Two coffee makers (I have a problem), an air fryer (I swore I would never buy), my Vitamix (see post on the Want-Willingness Gap), 4 different boxes of contact lenses (because I need some for close up and some for far away) (Damn it), alcohol for a Negroni (you never know when this might be a good idea), my bench I write on every morning and current journal (s) (written every day since March 2020), pens (see previous comment), my new black leather jacket (cost me enough from Joelle's for a mention in this post), and purple shampoo that every blonde would understand.
So, here we are.
36 days and counting.
AGAIN.
***
It is now New Year's Day.
I woke up to a blanket of snow on my terrace, with thoughts that this was so fitting and so beautiful.
I opened the blinds, turned the heat up to 74, put the coffee on, and walked from room to room smiling. It is light and bright here, full of windows, and worth every ounce of aggravation that moving causes.
I absolutely LOVE it.
Winter has arrived and I'm about to settle in.
***
There is something about a new space and a New Year that oozes possibility.
Even though technically every day we wake up is "new", January 1st seems to hold a special level of hope for all our dreams and goals to take hold.
January 1st is the day we stop drinking, start fitness campaigns, quit smoking or do whatever the thing is we deem as ultimately the change required for "happiness" in our lives.
I did the opposite today.
I went back to bed for a nap, I made bacon (obnoxious amounts of it), ate it all, had toast, danced in my living room to Kip Moore ("Hey Old Lover" is officially my new favourite song), walked to the Pearle Hotel for an Americano, and sat cross-legged on a rock by the waterfront watching the waves, drinking my coffee and feeling blessed that nothing else was open to distract me today.
I looked back at last year and thought about what stood out as lessons that I would remember from 2023.
There are people and moments, travels and experiences, and lessons from school, work and life. Opportunities I never saw coming and times that resulted as far from expectations as possible.
These are the ones I chose as my top 10.
***
1. Complaining is useless. We have 3 choices in life - accept it, change it or leave it.
I suppose the exception to this is when we aren't ready. Sometimes, we might not be ready to "do anything about it". There could be a level of awareness, but not enough willingness to take action. But at the end of the day, the choices are always the same.
Accept it, change it or leave it.
Period.
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, grant me the courage to change the things I can and wisdom to know the difference.
2. Emotional turbulence begins like a phishing email.
There may be something external, anything really, that can threaten a neutral, grounded state of being. I have had a couple of common ones that tug at me, wanting my attention. If I click on those thoughts, that 'thing' that's phishing at me for my attention, can spiral and can take me down a rabbit hole.
Mindfulness is learning what those things are and recognizing the danger before it is too late.
(I wish we had a magic button "report phish" that could make it go away, but we don't. Just an internal radar that gets stronger with practice, I guess.)
3. When overwhelmed, remove.
In April, I landed in Emerg. 4 courses in school, cognitive overload at work from too many projects, personal stressors and in over my head, I crashed and burned without even seeing any of it coming.
What I tried to do, was "do" my way out of it.
I booked massage appointments and therapy appointments and acupuncture appointments and spa treatments and days off, and ... and ... and. I thought the answer lay in an overload of "self care" and doing more things for myself.
I was wrong.
4. Just Be.
We have a lovely leader in Learning Delivery at IHG. I remember meeting with her after my hospital trip and telling her all the things I was doing to "correct this" as quickly as possible, so I could "resume play". I will always remember this conversation with her.
"Sarah, just be.
When exactly was the last time you just did nothing? Like absolutely nothing.
That's what you need to do.
Just Be."
That's what I did today. Dancing in my kitchen, napping at 11am, lying on the couch looking out at the white blanket of snow.
Just being.
5. That's enough for today.
In April, I also started therapy. It sounded like the respectable thing to do, to "fix" me.
I remember booking the appointments.
If they had let me book them every day, I would have just so I could "speed up my recovery".
I learned quickly though, that therapy and recovery does not work that way.
There comes a point where it is "enough for today".
We need time, to process, to digest and to allow some magic to occur before we go back in the ring for the next round.
Healing doesn't happen on demand.
6. When someone does something wrong, remember what they once did right.
I don't go to church, I have never been to confession and I have a belief system that "sorry does not cure" and certain actions are unforgivable.
This belief system has festered perfectionistic behaviours to slip in and out of toxicity at times through out my life, and a depressive state I have to be conscious to keep at bay.
Perfection is unattainable.
So if sorry does not cure, if nothing is "fixable", then surely I must suffer permanently.
Should I? Is that what I should wish for others? Pain that has no end?
That is not what I wish for.
So I have a choice.
I can choose to remember what they once did right and find compassion and forgiveness in my heart to carry on.
7. No matter how far you have travelled in the wrong direction, you can always turn around.
This was a background on my phone for a long time.
A reminder that every morning is a gift of a new beginning to try again.
8. Just because it isn't moving forward today, doesn't mean it never will.
Part two to this is that sometimes, things just need time.
My Aries nature struggles to understand this, but it is a concept I'm trying to grasp and slow down to.
9. The "perfect" mirror.
The first thing I bought for my new place is a mirror for the end of the hallway.
(Actually, 4 of them, because I couldn't seem to find one that I liked.)
After the Contractors put the first one up that I removed, there was a hole in the wall.
(I was so mad!)
I wanted to see a dry wall plug and a flawless mount to this mirror.
I was completely and utterly taken over emotionally over this hole in the wall from my "perfect" new space being now "imperfect", which all was their fault.
(Not mine for buying the wrong mirror in the first place.)
I was given words of wisdom at the time that now makes me smile when I look at the (new fourth) mirror at the end of the hallway now.
"Sarah, you're stuck at the problem. What are the options?"
The reality is that sometimes I want to have a party with the problem until I'm ready to do something about it.
But at the end of the day, the choices are always the same.
Accept it or change it.
(Or mud the wall, fill the hole, sand and paint it so that it's like it never happened.)
10. Life is like a movie. Today is just a snap shot.
This is my favourite.
I had lots of firsts this year, some of which went much better than others. I tripped over my words more than once, gained and lost people in my life, looked through rose coloured glasses one day and broken lenses the next.
2023 was an awakening of sorts that I have desperately needed to advance.
Sophia Vandaele, the General Manager of the Intercontinental New York Barclay hotel, said a line that has become one of my greatest memories.
At the time, I was interviewing her for a Women's Leadership workshop called RISE. We were talking about poor feedback and how you could get trapped in negative thinking from internalizing those comments.
What Sophia doesn't know, is how that translated to me in so many other aspects of my life.
"Really, this is just a snap shot. It doesn't reflect yesterday and it doesn't reflect tomorrow. It is just a snap shot in time.
Think of your life as being a movie and someone pressed pause on today.
That is just a glimpse, just a moment in time, but it isn't all of it.
It's just a snap shot."
I loved that reference and think about it often.
Tomorrow doesn't have to look like today.
We choose every morning how we are going to show up.
***
I am in my happy place.
I love, love, LOVE my new space.
(Did I mention how much I love it?)
I have worked so hard to get here, prayed so much for my creativity to resurface, for my mind to neutralize and be at peace, and to feel at ease with who I am again.
I am SO grateful and SO thankful.
2024 feels like it's going to be a time out.
A pause, like Sophia would say.
***
I wonder what comes next - the white picket fence or traveling around the world?
Am I settling up or settling down, or just settling in?
Who knows.
Maybe this year I won't try to wish it all away, full of new goals and dreams and milestones.
Maybe this year I just let go and let be.
I wonder what the end of 2024 would look like if I did that.
Just being.
I wonder......
Isn't the promise of New Year's Day just fabulous?
I sure think so.
♥
