It’s Saturday night and I wonder where the day has gone, where the weekend has gone. I usually have lofty goals for “free time” but they get ground away in all of the available distractions.
I feel like I spend a lot of time looking at other people’s lives and thinking about what my life should look like so other people admire it but it’s getting old. It makes me tired. I want to live my life instead of contemplating how to curate it. Agggghhh.
Lately I’ve felt blocked up and uncreative. You know what it is? I think it’s worrying too much about what other people think. It bottlenecks creativity like nothing else. Worrying that someone will get offended or dislike me or misinterpret me or think I’m lame or one of the million other somethings that stops me in my tracks when I am trying to create something. I know in theory that it is impossible to please everyone, yet in practice I still try.
I’ve thought a lot about this lately – what it means to not worry about what others think I should do and just do what I know I should do, what I like to do, what I believe God has created me to do.
I’m learning it takes a lot of courage to show up and be myself, to speak my mind and have an opinion – especially when that opinion differs from the majority. It takes still more maturity and humility to express these things with wisdom while still honoring the people around you (particularly the ones who disagree).
Yet life is short and I’m tired of losing myself because I fear the opinions and crave the approval of others. So I’m on this journey of finding my true self again and being okay with whatever I find.
I don’t want to wait until I’m so far gone, buried so deeply beneath all the layers of fabricated self that I have to do some major soul surgery to unearth the real thing – which by then will be rusty and dusty and need some serious tune-ups.
Well, Saturday night musing done. I guess I should be responsible and go to bed at a reasonable hour. Good night, friend – and happy wishes for a fresh new day tomorrow.
I'm a Silicon Valley transplant who put down roots in Tennessee, where I currently reside with husband Nick and fluffy cat Mochi. This is my little space on the world wide web to share encouragement, celebration, and practical stuff for the everyday.