Day 607 – Commitment

Today? Hi. I did the hard thing. I almost didn’t do it… I am learning how to live a life.

Life is life-ing, y’all. Pushing and pulling as it does. I wrote an entry earlier and then my computer died before I could finish it. And now my mind is elsewhere because somewhere reached out to me, pulling. They want me to go a place and do a thing. Not here. It’s a good opportunity.

Nothing has worked the way I wanted it to here. I had a dream last night. Someone I love was asking “What happened” with us. I have these moments in my life… We all do. I call it the swirl. It’s kind of like when you have a plan and then something you didn’t anticipate happens and then you have to make a quick decision. And the quick decision may or may not take you away from the direction you had planned to go. The swirl is what happened to me. It’s what happens to so many of us.

But I’ve been swirling for much longer than I would like to say out loud. For some of us, the swirl becomes a life. We had wanted to be an artist, but then someone stole our money, so then we had to detour and take whatever job would pay the bills instead of focusing on our art, and that job that was meant to get us out of crises becomes a ten year career. Or, because we are in crisis, we move somewhere where people hate art and hate us moreover and we forget about what we had wanted to do way back when. And some of us make a good life with the pivot. A great life in fact. We make money. We form community and family somehow…

I am here, realizing my plan is not working. But do you want to know the real truth? I never, ever really worked my plan to completion. And that breaks my heart more than anything. I’ve just been going from one swirl to another. That’s what happened. Someone didn’t keep their bargain on a business agreement, but didn’t tell me until it was too late, and so I had to not focus on film school and focus on survival and work instead, trying to save the business. At the end of the day it tanked anyway. Started over. Got some momentum. Some man made me an offer I couldn’t refuse and so I left a good film job in order to skip states and be with him, only to find out, well, I didn’t like him that much to be honest… Started over. Survive. Work work work. Friends and family came and stayed with me for one reason or another and their issues became my issues. Gave my heart to try and help people who, after all was said and done, were assholes at the core. Created a pattern in my life that my life doesn’t really matter. At some point, my body had enough and broke, and finally I paid attention to me.

But the dismantling of a whole way of being was not easy. Is not easy. How does one even do that? I have compassion for all the people who went somewhere and started over. Because how does one do that???? All the divorcees. All the people who left a place because of disaster. The orphans. The people whose families died. The abused. I have so much respect for those who get up and start a life again.

Someone reaches out to me this morning to ask me to abandon my plan. They don’t want to know what my plan is, lol. They just know that it hasn’t worked yet. And they are right. It hasn’t worked. But what’s even more true is that I haven’t worked it. I can blame all the things that happened, and, yes, they did happen.

But what are they worth if I go through all this nonsense and learn nothing? What also happened is that it became easy to not own my own life. And allow others to push and pull it so I didn’t have to face the real vulnerability of giving my all and failing.

So. Last week Monday, I got an email. I had failed. At something I had tried really hard for. It was the only reason I was here in LALA Land. Because I thought I was going to succeed at this one particular thing. But I didn’t. And, to be honest, God told me what to do next. But I didn’t want to listen. Because it all seems so hard.

And this is what I came here to write this morning. Y’all, I honestly Love this blog. It helps me process in a way that journaling and talking doesn’t. God already told me what to do. And me and God have decided to work in tandem these days. I need to do a bit more steering. He told me to keep going. What have I learned from all these happenings?

To be a good steward of my life. It has been a long, hard lesson to learn. I have been gifted with many things. I don’t say that to brag. I say it because it’s true. I never really realized that I was gifted until recently. But with great Blessings come great responsibilities. I didn’t understand that. You can’t just give your gifts away to anyone who wants them. You can’t just detour every time anyone cries wolf. You’ve got to learn to hold on to your gifts and cultivate them. You can’t surround yourself with vampires and think you’ll have enough blood to live. It won’t work. And on days like this, when things don’t work out like you’ve planned, you have to learn wisdom and discernment. Did you give the plan enough time and effort to work? Is it time to quit or is it time to restructure your efforts?

It’s not time for me to quit. Three months is enough time for most things to germinate. So I set the clock today. Three months. Do you know the biggest thing I’ve learned? You’ve got to show up. It’s ok to make mistakes. It’s ok if you can’t breathe and all the things as you are learning to hold your own will.

The thing I am getting to here, is that one day we die. Death is real to me, for I’ve faced it many times over the past years. Will you be satisfied with your efforts here? No judgment. It’s my question to myself. And the answer is no. Too much time spent on too much nonsense. We start again today. We commit. Commitment, that scary scary word, will take us the full distance.

And so we start our day. Bless you. Ameen.

Day 607

Commitment