Inner anchors

I still feel kind of crummy.

But I have been thinking, since just after my birthday, that I needed to go on a short journey early one morning. I need to bring paper and pen and spend time somewhere outside, jotting down intentions for myself. And then I pretty much got sick right away and have spent every spare moment since then sniffling and coughing and resisting the tightening pain in my chest. Sleeping as much as I can.

I've just had it in my head for a long time that 31 is not going to be a good year for me. 32 will be my year, I declared. Then I got to thinking about the folly in that, setting out to believe that just because I am facing a certain set of obstacles, a set of less than convenient or ideal circumstances, that it will be a bad year. Why? So that at the end of it I can say, "Well, I knew it," and revel in that grim self satisfaction?

No.

So 31 will be a good year. Maybe even GREAT.

I had a conversation with my husband where he said, essentially, well -- it's hard when X, Y and Z aren't in order. And I realized today that X is going to create a whole other set of problems.

And I thought, who cares about X, Y and Z? We should be cultivating joy in our daily lives REGARDLESS of X Y Z.

I'd like to get to a point where joy is something I carry around with me, a consistent thing, and not something influenced by the evil machinations of the random factors that can push and pull us in any direction. Life pushes at us from all over. At any given second something can happen to yank us down, pull is an abrupt left turn, or even subtly shift us toward point B.

I'd like joy to be my anchor, something that keeps me firmly in the moment. Something that I can pick up and move with me to the next thing. That joy, those inner anchors -- these are the only things we can ever really control anyway.

Tomorrow, no matter how crummy I feel, I'm getting up early to ride my bike. I'll bring pen and paper, and I'm going to ride until I find the perfect spot to sit and consider joy, to cast an inner anchor.

My life is everything already.

My throat is sore and scratchy and the muscles in my chest and back ache from so much coughing. My whole body feels fatigued, in fact, and while my sinuses are definitely clearer, I am sniffling every few minutes or so.

This is the tail end of the cold, thank goodness. I have the ability to weather a cold and feel like I'm dying, to just feel utterly bleak and miserable throughout the duration. But today is the day of clouds parting, of doors opening, of light streaming through windows. I feel more motivated than I have in all of a week. Who knows, maybe I'll clean something at the house today. Maaaybe.

It helps that yesterday was a day of rescuing snapping turtles from a busy road, cleaning up the kitchen, hot dogs and burgers on the grill, fresh mango, flawless bedtimes, and later, tiramisu and wine and good season finales on TV. Yesterday was also the day that I finally finished The Book Thief, and it is seriously the best thing I have read in forever. The end had me sobbing. Such a beautifully told story.

Plus, on Saturday I rediscovered Kimya Dawson's album, Alphabutt, more specifically the song "Happy Home (Keep on Writing)" and I listen to the "just make sure your life's exciting" refrain at the end and it makes me think of my girls. It fills my chest with that expansive sense of hope and possibility. Their lives can be anything. Why do we grow up and stop thinking that? That our own lives can be anything? My own life can be ANYTHING. Say it with me: My life can be ANYTHING.

Maybe it's better to think: My life is everything already. Say that, and wrap your arms around it and squeeze it hard before flinging it up into the sky and watching to see where it lands.

The fun theory!

More awesome videos here. So great!