Jump!

Writing words on paper. It sounds easy enough and I have a dozen or more first paragraphs floating through my brain. Today, I'm testing the waters. I'm putting my big toe in and checking the temperature. It seems okay. I'm not going to work on a technically perfect dive. I'm going to do this the easy way and just cannonball it. No more dry spells. Immersed. Buoyant. Back in the pool. Here I go.

All those first paragraphs I don't know what to do with? Here they are, in one rambling post. As I look back over my writing stops and starts that I don't know what to do with I often find a common thread. The latest thread is this: I've spent the last few years consciously working on becoming a better person. Just like life itself there's backsliding and progress but for the most part I can look back and see how far I've come.

Staying Positive
I steer clear of negativity and negative people. I know it's not entirely avoidable and my husband is probably reading this and sarcastically saying "Oh, really?"  I just came off of a weepy, sniffy and snot running weekend no thanks to a new medication that is toying with my emotions in a crueler fashion than any high school boyfriend. That's not the norm for me. Yes, I was that annoying young person who loved drama. I dog paddled through a sea of self imposed angst and I liked it. I guess I pictured myself as some suburban Plath or Hemingway but those days are long over and drama is overrated and highly annoying to others. For me, the repetition of positive thoughts produces more positive thoughts. Counting blessings is more productive than counting problems. How Pollyanna of me, right? It's nearly impossible to tell a negative person that concentrating on the positives really will make life better. It's not easy. It's especially not easy when you're drowning in turmoil. It requires discipline and daily and hourly reminders to pick yourself up and stop wallowing. And you know what? The more you work at it the easier it is. Sometimes it takes a good psychiatrist and medication and it always takes your own willingness to change. It took quite a while for me to see the benefits of living in gratitude and keeping  the past in the past where it belongs. I'm getting there.

Negative Space is a Positive Thing
The things we take away pull the things we keep into sharper focus. In my college design and layout classes I learned that it's the negative space that makes the subject matter pop. I try to apply that to the crazy design and layout of my own life.

I spend quite a bit of time in dead people's homes. That's not as strange a segue as you would think. At estate sales and auctions, where I find many of the retro and vintage items I resell,  I learn about people I  never met. I sift and sort through drawers and linen closets, pantries and garages and frayed velvet jewelry boxes.  This town is full of high class hoarders with collections of dusty figurines, old and brittle 78 rpm records, half full bottles of Chanel #5 and lingerie that proves that they did indeed love the nightlife way back when. So many memories living in their walls and hidden away in attics and cabinets. I find it fascinating but I couldn't live surrounded by so much stuff.

The clothes that spill out of our closets. The memory makers, trinkets and dust catchers that sit atop coffee tables and dressers. The furniture that anchors rooms. The people in our lives. They fill every space, nook and cranny in our physical and emotional world and we are so filled to the brim with things and thoughts that we often feel stuffed and clogged and sapped of energy. All this "stuff" takes the focus off of the relatively short list of things that are truly important. And as I get older I find that the list of important stuff grows shorter and shorter and the list of things I have discarded grows longer and longer. God, family, true friends and a box of memories are all I need.

Letting Go
Off my daughter went. No tears from me. Just a tiny bit of anxiety and a whole lot of happiness for her. She's 20 years old and flew across the country to film a movie for the third time in as many years but the difference this time is me. I'm not always this calm and I'm finally believing that the years of training myself to let go and let my children live their own lives is taking root.

I handle all of this much better than four years ago when my just turned 18 year old son flew from Los Angeles to Tennessee for a long weekend of music and mayhem known as the Bonnaroo Music Festival. His first trip to Bonnaroo meant 3 days of no sleep for me. I had the festival's live feed bookmarked and I crazily cleared my schedule to watch swaying and stoned patrons surge and surround stages. A tiny part of me wished I was 18 again. My brain has apparently filtered out the stench of  port-a-potties and sweaty stoners. An anxious and fearful part of me was scared to death that he would make a bad choice that would result in arrest or death. Yes, I make things much bigger in my own head than they are in real life and that's the flaw that needs addressing next.

I survived the weekend and so did he. And he went back the next year and I never once checked the live feed.

Restraint
Restraint is a good thing. As in less is more. Not restraint as in a Fifty Shades of Grey way. (C'mon ladies. I know you were thinking it.) I'm talking about restraining from excessive babble. Restraining from cruel comments. Restraining from inane chit chat and talking just to hear yourself talk. I often wish I had the quiet presence of some of my Midwest friends and not the Southern tendency to celebrate the gift of gab. I've tried to find a happy medium and I think I'm almost there but catch me on one of my more manic days and I'll chat up the customer next to me in line, post more than necessary on Facebook, offer advice to people who never asked and deliver an insensitive comment to someone I love. I've begun to ask myself, before speaking, if my words will help or heal, build up or tear down. It requires being present and living in the moment when I would much rather not expend the energy but the rewards have been too great to revert back to my old ways.

Staying True
I feel sorry for John Travolta and the "alleged" predicament that has caught him in a snare. The rumors about his overzealous behavior in spas and bath houses have persisted for years. If he is a gay man then I am so sorry that he has never been able to proudly proclaim his true self to the world. I am sorry he was sucked into a cult that dictates how he must live. I will heed my own advice in the paragraph above and restrain from spouting off about crazy Scientology.

In the Tao Te Ching, written in the 6th Century BC,  it says "Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power."  Staying true to yourself is apparently an age old problem. I'm sorry we live in a world that judges and demeans. When we deny our true self all kinds of problem rise to the surface and many of us are not unlike Mr. Travolta. The things we deny may not be our sexuality but they are just as important.

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You know when you're a kid and you stand at the end of the diving board for 5 minutes before jumping? The swimmers in line are yelling at you to hurry up. You think "What if I've forgotten how to swim?" When you finally hit the water, touch the bottom of the pool and push back up towards the sunlight it feels so good. And it reminds me of when my son was 4 or 5 and he was the one standing at the end of the diving board. He finally jumped...and he really had forgotten how to swim. He sputtered, arms flailed, his little head bobbed to the surface one or twice but he clearly remembered nothing about the mechanics of swimming. His dad and lifeguards were all there to fish him out and show him how to swim again. Here's hoping that all of us have people to teach us how to swim when we forget how.