Because it won’t last forever.
And if things are going bad, don’t worry. It can’t last forever either.
~Author Unknown
photo via stylemepretty.com
Remember
You Are
Capable
Confident
Compassionate
And beautiful.
What a nice thing to hear. Even a few months later.
I’ve decided I have to find a full-time or seriously part-time job soon. This is such a weird position for me because I’ve been chasing this dream for a few years to work from home as a writer… and I think it’s over. For now.
I’m not really one to always look at the facts, but they are that I am lacking funds and motivation. I WANT to write for a living, but I need more substantial clients. I love my current clients, but they just aren’t in the market to hire me full-time.
Sometimes I feel like I’ve been doing it all wrong. But the good news is I am finally coming to grips with this reality.
Like, I think I’m at peace with letting go of trying to do this dream my way. Maybe the universe has a better plan.Three years ago I set out for the sticks of Idaho with money my pocket and a dream.
Isn’t it funny how you rarely hear about those dreams that go astray? They’ll be a mention, in a book or something of someone’s failures, but most of the story is what happens next. And in most lives, it’s not becoming rich and famous. It’s becoming extraordinary is your own way.
I guess maybe that is life. We all have failures. We can hold on to them and create misery. Or we can leave them alone. I don’t think there is a single person on the planet who hasn’t failed. It’s like the bigger the failure, the greater the life and greater the risk.
I think it can only be considered a sad story, if the person ceases to have a dream at all. I think we just can’t always carve the paths to our dreams. Maybe we don’t realize that our dream is what we are living right now. We just don’t have the eyes to see it.
photo by Do u remember
My next question is what do you do after you surrender? Do you just try to “go with the flow” even when you’re unhappy? I feel like I’ve been in this passive mindset, and surrender should be active somehow.
This article, How to Surrender Without Giving Up says it nicely:
1. Surrender keeps you connected. It may involve painful decisions but you can still feel a sense of peace, and a connection with your truth. Giving up feels shallow, reactive, or incomplete inside.
2. Surrender is a decision. When you surrender, you remain engaged. You step in and chose your role in a situation. Giving up is not so much a decision as a way out.
3. Surrender is drama-free. Giving up nearly always involves dramatic exasperation and blame on outside people or circumstances. Surrender needs no fanfare. It makes itself known only through its undeniable clarity.
Surrender doesn’t mean you’re weak or you didn’t try. It means you’ve tried all you can and you’re consciously choosing to let go.
Believing we can control anything outside of ourselves is an illusion.
But we do have the ability to choose our thoughts and responses to everything. When things don’t go our way, we can still move forward without collapsing or giving up. Surrender is a deeper path. ~Christine Kane
photos by her wings and Capture Queen ™
I feel like I should explain my depression a bit. I had to write an article a few years ago for a health magazine about depression I did some research and discovered I had this low grade, chronic “this is just the way it is” depression inside of me that had become a way of life. I didn’t question it. I was able to function — I don’t think I’ve had a day where I didn’t get out of bed, but it often felt like I was trudging through a swamp.
This is how it feels:
It started some time in high school (back when it was “cool” to be depressed and misunderstood), but I never grew out of it. I found myself in my late 20s with the same level of functioning as I’d had as a teenager– and it was awful. Trying to thrive in this world when you’re on your own is hard enough — trying to do it while you’re sinking is even harder.
Before it even had a chance of getting better, I had to accept it and really live with it. And by live with it, I mean stop trying to fight the inevitable. I had to take the cloud over my head and try it on for size. One of the books I read at the time is called Unholy Ghost and it was a good book to read when I felt at my worst. It is not a warm and fuzzy book; but rather a candid look at writers dealing with depression.
It wasn’t until I watched What The Bleep Do We Know that I started to wonder. I started to create my day and through writing, I believe I built a new neural net in my brain (I’ll explain this more sometime). But my brain started working differently. I swear the brain is a sponge and I choose to give it hope.
I only got to this point of willingness after realizing I just couldn’t kill myself. I became curious about reincarnation and thinking about the idea that I definitely don’t want to set myself back a few lives. No thank you.
I say all of this is past tense because this is not who I am anymore. My first round of this blog in ’08 really changed me. There is a saying that external changes don’t impact happiness — and it is true. I did not find anything on the outside that did it (although having friends and knowledge built a foundation). It’s the changes on the inside I made — finding reasons to live – that counted the most.
photos by hill.josh and Håkan Dahlström
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