Should.
That fucking word. I swear to Christ.
It haunts us with things left undone. With potential. An endless stream of what-ifs, could-haves, and maybes that meld into a theatrical chorus of “You are not good enough as you are”.
I’m not talking about positive self-improvement. I’m talking about those twisted voices whose only purpose is to torment. We all have them.
“The Shoulds”.
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I have an annual tradition where toward the end of the year I deep clean my apartment and purge everything I don’t use. Year after year I slowly work myself toward being a minimalist.
If you come across an item you’re not sure about while you’re in the process of decluttering there is a three-question system you use:
I’ve been doing this for a while, so most things need two or more yeses to stay.
This year what struck me as I started cleaning out my ever-dwindling cabinets is that they are not full of “things” anymore. They are full of the people I used to be, or people I wish I was.
Because I understand multiple points of view, it takes me a while to figure out how I feel about things. I’ve always seen this as a weakness because in debates I am not able to respond quickly. And I can’t just blurt out whatever comes to mind because I also come with this self-edit-function that won’t allow me to stand up for something unless I know it’s true to ME.
And I wanted to sit on this until I knew I was saying my truthiest truth.
I turned on The Sound of Music today to keep my head occupied while I started reorganizing my living space (a fall tradition).
It’s one of my favorite movies. One of the things I really like about it is that every time I watch it, something else pops out at me. Today’s thing was Maria’s reoccurring line:
“When God closes a door, somewhere He opens a window”
I surprised myself by responding, “Yeah, I don’t think that’s always true.”
You are overwhelmed. You are scared. You are the adult and the decision is yours. Everyday the decisions are yours. All of them. No one is going to tell you what to do.
But you don’t know what to do. You don’t know which decision is the right one. Or the situation is so convoluted there are multiple options but none seems to truly be the right one. Or more than one could be correct, or maybe three. And then even what initially seemed to be the wrong answer starts looking like it might be the best way to go.
“Don’t just stand there,” your brain says. “You are scared. You are uncomfortable. DO SOMETHING. ”
I used to. I used to just do something. Just pick something at random and go with it so that the decision was made and the uncomfortable would stop.
Which had disastrous outcomes. (As you may have guessed)
Me and songs. Specifically, MY songs. If I can call them that. They feel very alive to me. I am the gateway that brings them into the world, but after that they are their own beings. They grow, develop and have small, beautiful, precious moments that only I get to be a part of. They say things I would never expect. They take me places I would never have chosen to go. They make choices that make me cringe and infuriate me.
The Virgo is trying something new this month.
I began by actually sitting down and writing out my job description. I included all the tasks I own from the most obvious (Create Music) to the most mundane (Prepare food for the week). I also made sure I included all the stuff I always WANT to do, but feel like I don’t ever have enough time to do (Creative Writing, Arts ‘n Crafts – because who else is going to make hand crafted decoder rings and SKS buttons?).
