Dear Self, follow your own yellow brick road

A couple of weeks ago, after reading the March Love Letter Requests over and over, I felt at a loss for words. I couldn’t figure out what to write to each person. I nearly gave up on writing anything at all. So I sat down to watch an episode of “Pretty Little Liars.”

About halfway through, I paused it, grabbed a pen and started scribbling. I wrote a letter to the person I could identify with, to Connie. What I wrote will, I hope benefit her, as much as it helped me while I was writing out my thoughts.

I could as well have addressed it to myself. So in a way, I’ve done it, my own personal thought from February was accomplished. I’ve written myself, too, a love letter.

Letter transcript:

“Dear Self,

I know how acutely the sadness of life can be felt. I’ve felt it. I feel it myself. It has the ability to numb one’s mind, to keep one from moving along. It makes one cry themselves to sleep.

But we have to get out from there. Walk out and follow our own yellow brick road leading us to where we should be: in the present. I think that is where Dorothy was heading. From a place of sadness, through the world of her perceptions, imagination and dreams. Into the present.

Where wonderful things can happen if we allow them to unfold. We have to wake up to being right where we are supposed to be.

There truly is no place like home; the home that leaving worries of the past and future provides!

Love,
~K”

My favorite piece of advice that I’ve been given

Hmmm… advice, both asked for and unrequested, comes along on an almost daily basis.

From the most “basic” grandma-type of advice which I generally cringe from after hearing it three times a day, to the most eloquently phrased (let’s use the following, for the lack of a better word) professional advice we read on the internet and from books.

My own personal favorite? I think it’s quite a few (hundred and beyond that) people’s favorite. It comes from Anne Lamott’s “Bird by Bird” and reads:

“What people somehow forgot to mention when we were children was that we need to make messes in order to find out who we are and why we are here – and, by extension, what we’re supposed to be writing.”

It is the best advice I could’ve gotten at the time of my reading her book last year. So much so, that I talked about it before, in my guest post “Life and writing are messy – but you’ve gotta love the challenge!” on Fear of Writing.

And you know what? I love it so much, because it’s an evergreen piece of advice!

 

*Blog post inspired by this question from Danielle LaPorte’s The Burning Questions Series.

My relationship to excitement

Oh, yes. I count down. Lay out different outfits until finding the best choice. Pack my bags ahead of time. Make lists. And I imagine everything in great detail. 

My enthusiasm for upcoming things is quite boundless. Excitement does mean more fun, more to be excited about. However, I try to keep myself in check to a (at least a very) small degree.

Guess I’m just afraid of disappointment…

 

What about you? What is your relationship to excitement?

 

*Blog post inspired by this question from Danielle LaPorte’s The Burning Questions Series.

What would you like to stop doing?

In no particular order, I’d like to stop:

• procrastinating
• making excuses for not creating more time for theater and opera, walks, reading, writing and everything else that I love
• worrying about anything and everything that doesn’t have a good reason to support said worrying
• putting myself down if some items on my to-do list don’t get crossed off
• staying up too late – no matter what the reason
• losing patience
• doing things for others when it’s not my “job” to and it isn’t even appreciated
• letting stuff pile up until not having done them drives me crazy
• underselling myself
• letting small, unimportant things upset me

To actually stop doing them will take a while, but I think I’m on the right track.

Your turn, what would you like to stop doing?

 

*Blog post inspired by this question from Danielle LaPorte’s The Burning Questions Series.

Revolutionizing, burnt boats and my super hero name

What do you want to revolutionize?

Will have to agree with Danielle, whose question inspired this answer, and admit that my heart has a long list of things that I would like someone else to revolutionize. I won’t go into it all now, that doesn’t get anything done anyway.

As for what I’d personally like to revolutionize? My answer to that would be: my surroundings, and I’ll do that by simply being here.

Because the truth is, my being here is a revolution in and of itself after nearly being denied staying on this earth a couple of years ago.

~~~

What boat do you need to burn? a testimony to your future

I need to burn the boat of relationships past.

It was a sturdy, reliable vessel. It brought me to where I am today even if the waters tested its solidity and efficiency through more storms than I would have cared for. We’ve weathered through them all – family disputes, failed romances, toxic friendships. It has taught me so much through the entire journey!

It also brought me to where I am today. And as far as I can tell right now, this is where I want to be. So I am lighting a match, with gratitude.

~~~

What’s your super hero name?

My superhero name is Estrella Azul.

It is my pen name, a name I chose for myself in 2007, a name I love. A name which consists of the things I love; stars and the color blue. Since I received my blue starfish pendant it also represents my love of the sea, the ocean, the beach.

My special power is love, I think, that is my default setting. As for what else I could say about it all, I think my warning label sums it up very well.

 

 

*Blog post inspired by this, and a few past week’s questions from Danielle LaPorte’s The Burning Questions Series.

One dumb thing I used to believe in (Okay, so maybe two)

I used to believe I was weak and worthless. Some years ago, yes, but remnants still floated by every once in a while closer to the past few years. Inadvertently, I also used to believe self-love didn’t have much to do with the love I put out there and share with everyone I care for.
And then there was last May. Last May, I wrote myself a love letter. I gave myself permission to do one thing, for seven days. I committed premeditated acts of self-love. I wrote a list of what I’m allowed to do, and paid more attention to all that I can do.
It was a month of self-love, but also a moth of rediscovering myself, of rediscovering how much I’m worth and how while my heart may be broken to pieces not only in big life altering ways, but in tiny everyday ways, while I may be fragile to a certain degree – I’m strong enough!

When I read j’s recent post tonight, over at a Human Thing, it has led me to be able to recognize what made my day a good, truly love-filled one:
allowing myself to feel vulnerable and breakable.
(After a babysitting situation which in the heat of the moment felt/was quite brave. In hindsight it was also quite stupid/dangerous, but that’s how the “mommy-bravery” thing works, I guess).

 

What’s one dumb thing you used to believe in?

 

*Blog post inspired by this week’s question from Danielle LaPorte’s The Burning Questions Series.

 

PS: I also used to believe in fairy tales and buy into the whole concept of The One. At the end of 2010 I have also come to the same conclusion as Danielle has. But that’s another story.

Are you allowed to?

For the last full week of May we didn’t get a self-love assignment from J as a part of her Love Project.
That means I spent the past eight days – though not deliberately – paying attention to anything but loving myself or giving myself a break. Both figuratively and literally. (Although to be fair, I did reward myself by starting lunch backwards after today’s achievement and had dessert first )

It was definitely a full week that I’ve spent mainly with cleaning up and sorting stuff (after a new water heater was installed, after rearranging all the furniture in my mom’s room (plus, it’s beyond me how I can take a door off its hinges, carry it outside, then bring it inside and put it back in its place ALL by myself – but then hurt my ankle while moving a bed when I have help…), tutoring, decorating my grandparents’ birthday cake, making lemonade, having company over, finishing/mailing wedding favor orders, wiring and installing an outlet (gotta love home improvements!)… etc.
And while I loved doing all of these and they give me a boost of happiness, they also left me beyond tired. Add that to windows/doors being changed this week throughout the house and don’t forget to include little-to-no sleep – I’m not sure what you’ll get as a result come next week. We’ll have to wait and see I guess.

However, even if I didn’t have time to sit down and properly work on it until just now, after being very much inspired by J’s post, and the quote which inspired her – every time something came to mind I jotted it down and by today, I came up with the list you’ll find a couple of paragraphs below.
So I did do some soul searching and that’s always a plus

“ It’s interesting that the allowed list is harder to remember and to write down. I think we might be afraid of how much freedom we actually have, and how much we’re expected to do with that freedom. ”

– Seth Godin, Poke the Box

The quote really got me thinking of how kids are raised given a whole list of what not to do/say/think. Of how, when we’re all grown up, we turn that into an even longer list we live by. Generally without second guessing, and especially, more often than not without even thinking of all the thing we ARE allowed to do.  

So, here’s some of what I’m allowed to:

• I’m allowed to not be as perfect as I think I need to be
• I’m allowed to enjoy the silence
• I’m allowed to hope – it’s the bravest thing I have
• I’m allowed to change, to be different
• I’m allowed to be myself – no one else will
• I’m allowed to play
• I’m allowed to try and learn – anything and everything
• I’m allowed to make messes
• I’m allowed to trust and don’t disregard that first instinct
• I’m allowed to choose
• I’m allowed to feel – love, sad, happy, relieved, anything and to (below)
• I’m allowed to not feel guilty
• I’m allowed to occasionally overreact
• I’m allowed to do what I think is best vs. what everyone thinks I should be going
• I’m allowed to cry, to hurt, to be vulnerable – once in a blue moon, once a week, every day… whenever
• I’m allowed to pause to reflect
• I’m allowed to go for it, to rather regret going for that part on Life’s Stage, than regret not trying out at all
• I’m allowed to be full of hesitation, to be positive that I’m unsure

Feel like sharing? What are you allowed to do?