On Changing Your Life

I apologize for the hiatus in posting. It is a side effect of the busyness of my final semester of college. Bad excuse, I know.

The good news is that due to the amount of time that has past, I have something of substance to report: I’ve changed.

Oh, yeah, sure. After a month or two don’t we all? Yes, but how much? I suppose I should say, I have changed and made change quite a bit in a relatively short amount of time.

I blame it on the weather. (another bad excuse)

The cool breezes of fall began to creep into the Deep South and I was awakened. It’s my favorite time of year, a season where I feel most aligned with myself, and as it rolled in I realized that summer had taken a toll on me. My life and myself were like a lock and key that no longer fit together. I had been melted by the dog days of Georgia’s heat into something the crisp autumn leaves would never recognize. I simply awoke one day and realized I had to change my life, a lot of it.

This meant breaking up with my boyfriend in realizing that I needed to use my time more wisely and more accurately curate the influences in my life in order to help me become what I want to be. This meant getting back into training for the Trail: waking up early, making a decent breakfast, running at the mountain and doing strength workouts. This meant putting a lot more of my time and energy into my artwork, which is teetering on a very important crux at this time, and spending a lot more time in the studio and in the darkroom hashing out ideas. This meant recalibrating my priorities all together.

So I made these changes and began to live in this way.

And let me tell you, I do realize it all seems a little crazy to be suddenly struck with (and act on) this incredible need to change the way you live your life (particularly to the guy who gets dumped in the process), but this is not the first time I have done this and Billy** is not the first boyfriend to suffer the consequences. It is a very frustrating side of my self, that I see a truth in my life and have to follow it even when it seems to uproot me completely. I have very few explanations for friends, family and involved partners as to why I must follow these ideals in my mind besides just that I simply MUST.

All I can do is trust in them to lead me somewhere new.

And for the record, so far it kind of sucks. Change is not like a magical pill tat brings light into the darkness of feeling out of alignment with oneself. A lot of the time I am tired and don’t want to wake up and run. And my weekends are mostly spent at home, by myself, instead of watching a movie cuddling on the couch. And, over all, my social life is relatively lack luster in comparison to the summer months. And it seems that not matter how much work I try to get done and how much “extra” time I have opened up for myself, I cant seem to get ahead of the curve with school work and artwork.

So, why, then?

Because I have to trust myself that something good is forming in the ether. That I am being remade and reformed for a future I can’t see yet. Time will tell, and when it does, I will relay the news.

**Billy and I remain good friends and he some how has always understood and accepted how I function (or maybe more like malfunction). For that, and all the great things I was exposed to through him (I know how to order a cocktail now and really enjoy them, it was IMPOSSIBLE for me to do before no matter how hard I tried) I am forever grateful.