Dusting Off and Shaking it Up

There are many factors, situations, incidences, or even people that can cast a dense layer of fog over one's view of the world. You may think that once you have your life, your path, yourself all figured out from now on it's clear horizons into old age...

WRONG!

If anything, the opposite is true. I have discovered in recent months that as soon as I nestled myself into a comfortable modest existence with a clear view of what I wanted for my life, it was as if the forces of the universe sprung into immediate action with the sole mission of trying to derail me. Here I was, riding high on the satisfaction that washes over a person that has found their passion and direction in life, and it was as if Life (that bitch) said to me, "Oh, yeah? You sure about that?"

Derail me she did. Life was able to throw up a number of road blocks in my path to success and happiness; and I crashed into every single one of them going 120 miles an hour. 

I'm struck with an image of a snow globe. Inside that little glass ball there is another world. It may be the skyline of New York City or children ice skating on a frozen pond, but whatever the image inside the globe may be it represents a world within a world. It is protected by the forces of the outside world by a fragile shield of glass. 

I see my vision of what I want for the remainder of my life as a snow globe. It's a dream, a goal that exists in a tiny glass
sphere. I can look at it longingly but I haven't been able to reach it yet. For many months I held that dream in my hands and took it everywhere. 

But as time passed I started to get distracted. I would forget to carry that metaphorical snow globe with me some days. Eventually the dream started to collect dust as it was neglected completely. There were even situations that threatened to shatter the globe into an unfixable pile of rubble.

What started as minor distractions grew into habits that stopped just short of transforming into a lifestyle. I ignored the nagging voice that was either coming from somewhere in the depths of the logical part of my brain or perhaps from my laptop- or maybe they were ganging up on me. Either way, I blew them off. I was having fun and living it up while I was still in my twenties and had minimal responsibilities. I was denying myself one monumental truth, however: I had a responsibility to myself and Brandon.

I owed myself and I owed my husband the respect of making something of myself and not letting my goals and dreams fade into a fog of hedonistic, dead-end indulgences. I always considered myself a strong a resilient person; some days I would even say stubborn. But somehow my inner weakness took over and lead me in a dangerous direction. My life was thrown completely off balance and I soon discovered that I was no longer seeing things clearly. My snow globe was covered in dust so thick I almost couldn't see what was inside, my inspiration and clarity had become dull and faded under the weight of the fog, and my passion had all but packed up and vacated the premises.

I wish recovering from such a lapse could be as easy as brushing off the dust and picking up where I left off, however it's never that simple is it? I have to find my inspiration again, my balance in life.  For Christmas Brandon gave me a silver pendant of a compass. The message along with it stated that: No journey to anywhere worth getting to will be easy. This compass is to remind you to always focus on your destination and never give up on your dreams.

So, this is my first attempt to stretch my artistic muscles and clear the dust off my vision. I still intend on squeezing all the fun I can out of the remainder of my twenties, however my clear mission for the new year is to find balance.

Happy New Year, everyone! I hope it's the best one yet!!