The Elusive Happy

We lay in bed at night and talk. We ask each other questions. I ask M what he wants and he simply says that he wants for me to be happy. Happy! Happiness seems too elusive an emotion for me. I rarely feel happy these days. How can I feel happy when I am so dissatisfied with my life, with myself, with my realtionships, with my living location? I ask M to want something else, to ask me something different. He seems frustrated with my inability to just be happy. He says that I am complicated.

We bicker, we argue. I blame him for my boring life. He says he is doing the best he can, but ultimately, I am responsible for making my own happiness. If I am unhappy with my life I need to change it, do things that are more meaningful, more interesting, more stimulating. I complain, I turn my back on him and shut him out, I am angry with him, but a secret little part of me knows that he is correct.

How did this come to be? There was a time when my life seemed so full, of activities, of friends, of ideas, of potential. Maybe this is mid-life crisis, but I have recently realized that life is whizzing by me and I need to gain control of my life again. On the quick slide to 50, there is no more putting off my life, it's now or never. So....my New Year's resolution to be intentional about my life. I must admit that so far I have more intentional about my life, more activities, more positive, more organized, more creative, and I think I am feeling better. I have been watching my eating habits, and trying to only eat when I'm hungry and not out of boredom or eating my unhappiness.

Yesterday I stepped on the scales and I am down about 25 lbs, a drop in the bucket, but I have not seen this weight since shortly after my car accident almost ten years ago. Ten years! All of a sudden I became very emotional and realized that it had been almost ten years since I had really been happy. I was in that horrible accident and I think that I never realized it crushed my spirit as well as my body. My body, for the most part, healed in a year....but my spirit...it has been hurting a long time. It was an epiphany moment....I have lost ten years....but now the fog has lifted. For the first time in what seems like an eternity, I felt hopeful about my life, not weighed down by sorrow....I felt....happy!

The lost ten years....I never can recapture them. What's past is past, but if I dwell on them, then I stay in the darkness. There was much sadness, loss, and disappointment in that time. I let my family down. I let my friends down. Mostly I let myself down. But even in the despair, there were bright moments. Those are the memories I choose to focus on, those are the times I choose to remember.

The darkness lives with me always, it's my constant companion. But we all have baggage we carry with us in life. It will never go away, but now I will travel through life with me leading the way and making the decisions, not the darkness.

And yesterday? Well, yesterday I looked at my life and what I felt was happy. Happy! No specific reason. No mountain-top experience. Just a normal day in a normal life that I was happy with. No one other person had to make it happen, it just came from within me.

I texted M and told him that I felt happy. He replied that if I was happy then he was happy. It was a good day!

Did Edward Scissorhands Ever Feel Overwhelmed?

A flurry of patterns, pins, fabric, and measurements accompanied by the snipping and slashing of sharp shears has left me ready to start sewing dresses in the morning....and I feel panicked and sick to my stomach!

One dress needs to be form fitting. Boning in the second dress looks like it requires a licensed architect. Why do I do this to myself? It's a repeating pattern (and I don't mean one for a dress!). I have great ideas and good intentions, but when push comes to shove, I procrastinate, realize I don't have the talent or skills required, and then because I have left it to the last minute, I have to go through with it because there is no backup plan and giving up is not an option! Especially when two 17 year old girls are depending on me to wave my magic wand and create beautiful ball gowns out of a tangle of discount fabric and a 30+ year old sewing machine.

The real issue here (and with other projects) is not my lack of aptitude or ability to learn a task, but my lack of working in a timely manner! I feel so great when I finish something early...I am empowered, confident, relaxed...it's such an visceral "high" that I don't know why I continue to procrastinate.

Too late to get an early start on this project, but as part of my "intentional" theme this year....I intend to get an early start on my next project. I could come up with all sorts of pithy sayings or motivational prompts, but really what good would they do? Just a lot of wasted time, especially if I never put them to use! I just have to make myself get an earlier start and avoid proscrastination...can that become a habit? I hope so.

Back to the formal gown project....I have to complete it now that I have set the ball in motion. How? Prioritize. Set goals for each of the next seven days. Start early each day so I have time if I run into a challenge and need help. Let wait things that can be dealt with after Formal. Keep a sense of humor and a positive attitude, especially with my "clients" and my husband. Cut corners in other areas of my life where I can. In that vein, I ordered dinner from CPK and sent my daughter's boyfriend to pick it up curbside. One point for the home team. :)

This home has been turned into Project Runway....but hopefully with less drama....and no "Auf Wiedersehen". But where is Tim Gunn when I need him? Guess I will have to "make it work" all on my own. 

An Intentional Year

Starting this blog is rather like walking into a movie already begun....do you turn around and leave faced the onerous task of trying to decipher what has gone on before? Or do you just sit back and enjoy the production, hopeful that the blank spots will be filled in and the film will have other merits?

Too much water under the bridge....I begin where I am....with longevity in my family genes, about half-way (hopefully) through an unremarkable life. Perhaps a mid-life crisis or an imminent empty nest or reconnecting with old friends or a spate of deaths this last year or a scary health incident with my husband has caused me to truly take stock of my life. And what do I see? Not much....I have set out, intending to do great things, but rarely follow through. I am intelligent, curious, creative....a great "idea" person....I have a million ideas and projects and novels and quests and thoughts and pursuits....but at the end of the day, the month, the year, the decade I have nothing tangible to show. Can the quest for perfection be a failing? I think my fear of being less than perfect, writing an unsuccessful novel, not having the perfect career, not having a designer magazine worthy home, has kept me frozen and from participating fully. Fear of failure has kept me on the sidelines of my own life more comfortable with doing nothing  than accomplishing something less than perfect.

Resolutions for the New Year have not been my style in the past...a laundry list of dour dos and don'ts. However, upon reflection I have decided that I will have a theme to my life this year. I resolve to be intentional....about my goals, my time, my relationships, my friendships, my faith, my joy, intentional about my life. To quote Mason Cooley, "Regret for wasted time is more wasted time", so henceforth, I intend to make this life matter....in ways small and in ways larger....but always (hopefully) with consideration and purpose.

Always urged by my family to write, here it is....imperfect amd rough and spontaneous....if I wait to get it all polished, to be worthy of a pulitzer prize, to be deep and amusing and original...it will never happen.

This is my life....I intend to live it to its fullest!