Only The Curious

I’ve had a lot on my mind lately. My 30th birthday is later this week and it’s been giving me pause. It’s a good time to stop and think about things, kind of like New Year’s eve. Except instead of looking at the next year I’m looking at the next decade. And the past one.

It always seems like life passes so quickly. But then I think back to 10 years ago, and everything that has happened in that period of time, and it calms me down. I have a lot of time. All the time in the world.

…which is not to say I’m going to stop trying to live every day like it was my last. I heard someone use that phrase on the radio the other day, they were saying that 9/11 is a good reminder to live every day as though it’s your last, because you never know when it will be. Which caused me to stop and ponder, what the hell does that mean, anyway?

Really, if it was my last day and I knew it, I’d probably fly somewhere I could stick my toes in the ocean, go skydiving, eat all of my favorite foods, and round up all of my favorite people in one place. But I can’t do that every day. And most of us will never know when our last day will be. I have come to the conclusion that “living every day as if it were your last” really means not to do anything you’d regret, or wish you could go back and re-do, or change. It means to be nice to people, don’t go to bed angry, tell the people you love that you love them.

But it also means not to concede the things you want. Make the choices that are what you really want out of life, every day. Live with integrity.

As I’m writing this, I’m thinking that these things sound a lot like The Four Agreements: Don’t make assumptions. Don’t take things personally. Be impeccable with your word. Always do your best.

Really, that last one sums it all up. If you’re always doing your best, then you’re already doing the other things.

So I will live every day like it is my last by doing my best.

How will you live every day as though it were your last?

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So… I got busy and behind on my Reverb10 posts. So I’m just going to pick up from today’s prompt, and I’ll use the ones I missed in the future.

Today’s prompt: “Wisdom. What was the wisest decision you made this year, and how did it play out?”

To be honest, I made a lot of decisions this year that seemed unwise at the start. There are probably people in my life who would argue that they remained unwise decisions, but I regret few of them. It sounds cliche, but even the ones that cost me in one way or another taught me a lot, and influenced where I am today.

I would say the wisest decision I made was to trust and believe in myself.

I made this decision over and over again. It was the foundation underlying the more apparent big decisions I made throughout the year. In the past I have found myself to be indecisive; I would spend a lot of time asking other people what they thought I should do. But this year I just went with what I thought was right for myself, even if it defied logic or reason. Apparently those are tools others use for decision-making.

Ultimately this played out the most during the past 5 months. After I returned from the bike tour, I didn’t have a job. And I decided not to go out and get one. This, my family would likely argue, was an unwise decision. They’re right, from a financial perspective. But I just knew I didn’t want to give up on myself as a freelancer again. I didn’t want to go apply for jobs I didn’t want.

There were many times I looked at my budget, shed a tear or two, and started prowling the jobs section on Craigslist. I put in a handful of haphazard job applications. There were more than a few positions that I was actually kind of interested in. But I was usually genuinely relieved when no one called for interviews.

In the meantime I was writing, and blogging and going to networking meetings. I made connections and got new cards printed and started revamping my website. Eventually I stopped applying for jobs. I just kept feeling I was right on the edge – the tipping point – of being able to freelance sustainably.

I’m finally starting to make it. I love my days; there’s almost nothing I’m doing anymore that I don’t enjoy. Even my work. I have flexible time, variety, and I’m not stressed out. I’m happy. I don’t regret the big choices I made, even the ones that didn’t pan out the way I wanted.

There’s some ongoing believing in myself to be done, but that decision is getting easier every time I make it.

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This is my first post of the Reverb10 series. Each day during the month of, participants receive a prompt to blog/write/create about. The prompts are to encourage reflections on the past year and set intentions for the coming one. I’m a couple of days behind, so look for multiple posts the next few days.

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I thought it would be challenging to come up with one word to sum up the past year. It’s been a pretty volatile year for me, and it started on a terrible note. “Change” was my word last year,  and it seems equally applicable to this year. But it wasn’t the word that popped in my head the second I finished reading the prompt. The word that popped in my head was “love.”

This kind of surprised me, given how tumultuous this year  have been. But the single biggest and greatest thing that happened to me this year was that I fell in love with Karl. I met this man who surprised the hell out of me when I realized I was starting to picture a future together. Yet, while our initial romance was a whirlwind that literally left me lying on the floor one night, telling him I couldn’t believe how fast it was all happening, Karl is not the only reason that love is my word for 2010.

The people I thanked in my gratitude post the other day are another reason. I have had wonderful friends many times in my life, but never friendships so necessary or challenged as the ones I had this year. It’s the first time I would even describe friendships as being full of and expressing love.

There’s a dark side to my word, though, too. Through my various trials and tribulations I was forced to take a hard look at my relationships with my family, and to explore what that kind of love meant. I found out we had very different ideas of what our relationships meant and what expectations we could have of each other. I questioned what love with family meant if not the expectations I had previously held as a part of that. And ultimately, it was having love for my family that pushed me to resolve issues and not allow grudges to be held or rifts to be formed.

But back to the good side of love. I also fell in love with a place. Of course I had long wanted to return to Colorado, but I don’t think I truly appreciated and started loving Denver until this spring. It takes awhile for a new home to actually feel like home.

I also moved into doing work that I love. It took patience and self-discipline, but I found a way to do it. There are few things more fulfilling.

And finally, getting through this year took a lot of learning how to love myself. How to be gentle, and patient, and listen to myself. There have been several bouts of falling out of love with myself, and learning how to draw myself back into happiness, and self-confidence, and okay-ness, and more than that, figuring out how to sustain it.

They say all you need is love. I agree. All you need is love, in its many, many forms.

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