Yesterday was the 2-year anniversary of my blog.
Two years. Five hundred and thirty days of turbulent life lessons and accounts of adventures I’ve faced that a younger me would gawk at and never believe to be true.
When I started my blog at 25, I had a drove of stories to tell but I honestly felt it would run dry pretty quickly. However, the memories grew deeper, the heartbreak (unfortunately) repeated and the teachings life has to offer still continue to stack themselves to the sky.
It’s a good thing and it’s a bad thing. It’s a good thing that life has been so colourful and stimulating. It’s a good thing I’ve been motivated to share my experience. It’s a bad thing that I often find myself writing through what seem (too often) to be challenges, dealing with heavy and emotionally taxing situations and yearning for an easier time. At 27.
The age old question: When did things get so damn complicated? Really though! At what point did life become more about where your next meal is coming from or if you can afford rent than it did about what music festival you were going to attend? When did it become more about picking yourself up off the floor while nearly drowning in your own tears than it did about trying to stay up late enough to catch Saturday Night Live?
I remember running around with my best friends in what had to be grade 5 and ‘engraving’ our names with magic markers inside the culverts of Oakbank, Manitoba. Our biggest problem was whether or not it would have washed off by morning.
Summer of grade 8: I remember chasing boys around on their mini bikes while Nelly’s Hot in Here played in passing cars. The biggest problem was if those boys even remembered our names.
I remember in grade 4, inventing the Telephone Messenger Pipe Thing (TMPT) with my best friend Cody and sending our idea off to the Alexander Graham Bell Museum. Our biggest problem was whether or not they would respond. (They did, with a nice information package, but ignored our brilliant invention..)
I remember making lists of the boys we liked the most in our class. The biggest problem was if they wrote back and listed us as being Number 2 instead of Number 1.
Things have been hard lately. And life has been scary. It’s been bigger and meaner and more relentless than I thought it could be, because every time a challenge arises, another challenge is following closely behind to one-up that sucker.
I am now agonizing about fixing my heart at its core, quitting smoking (again) and renewing my self-esteem and rebuilding my creativity. I am contemplating my life’s next steps and the best direction to get there. I’m trying to figure out how to be kind to myself. I miss those culverts, but they sure as hell aren’t coming back.
Days, up and down they come
Like rain on a congadrum
Forget most, remember some
But don’t turn none away.
Everything is not enough
And nothin’ is to much to bear.
Where you been is good and gone
All you keep is the getting there.
– Townes Van Zandt, To Live is to Fly
When your parents told you to STOP TRYING TO GROW UP SO FAST, they were so brutally right. At this stage in the game, everyone out there is fumbling around the exact same way you are, the exact same way I am, questioning what’s so different between now and then.
The difference is the year, and the difference is your age. That gleam in your eye still exists and those carefree spirits still glow – they’ve just been dimmed a little – or a lot. Don’t let them dim too too much. Don’t allow life to tear you down to the point where you cannot deal with reality, to the point where you don’t recognize that child inside you, to the point where you wonder how you possibly got into that fetal position on the floor. You are in the driver’s seat.
Pick yourself up because the only reason you should be dusting off your pants is from crawling through that playground (metaphorically or literally, your choice) – and since we don’t have access to time machines, the only point in looking back now is to see how far you’ve come.
And really, it only gets more complicated from here, so hang on. Savour every morsel of wonder and happiness and get a firm grip on that. Every amazing person you encounter and every laugh you let out. Hard to recognize sometimes, but the good ol’ days are right here, right now – hold tight and don’t let go.
