outside in

The other night I took a photo of my kitchen as seen from my back deck where I was standing outside smoking a cigarette and freezing my ass off.  I like looking into my kitchen from the outside.  Especially when it’s cold out and I have something cooking on the stove.  Sometimes I’ll lean forward over the deck to try and see if I can make out the digital clock on the stove or see the steam rising from the pots.  It’s a cool contrast to standing outside in the dark surrounded by snow, with the woods to my back.

Things have been going so well lately that I almost don’t want to talk about it for fear that everything will change and become horrible again.  This week I sold an essay to an online newsletter, got a spot to write on a website that I love, and got a call for a possible gig that would mean I get to leave my house and make money doing something I love for a few hours every week.  Compared to six months ago my life feels totally different and for that I am so thankful.  It’s almost hard to believe there was a time this year when I couldn’t imagine that things would get better. 

I know my life looked pretty great before.  To the people outside who weren’t living in it.  I had a great job, a great kid, a supportive husband…and so much stress that my jaw would ache at night when I tried to relax.  Even now there are people, well okay one person not including myself, who thinks I’m a jerk for what happened.  As though if I were stronger I could’ve held on and continued torturing myself for the good of my family.  But when I look around today, my family is in a much better place for what happened and the decisions I made as a result.  I don’t walk around like a big stress monster, and I am finding joy in my life now instead of gritting my teeth each day trying to get through it.  If you’re wondering, the person who judges me is not an important person to me, just someone who is in my life because we are members of the same family.  And it’s easy to disregard the opinion of someone who lives a life that has striking parallels to my own life as it was a few months ago.

Anyway, part of what I’m learning to do is just be, and it’s harder than I thought.  I have goals and ideas and things I want to do, but all that is second to keeping my priorities in place and making sure I don’t throw everything out of balance again.  I’m trying not to look too far ahead and just live in the moment because days and months and years go by so quickly and then they’re gone.

Tomorrow I will no doubt be back to reflecting on the absurdity in my life, but in the few quiet moments before the house wakes up this morning and the bedlam begins, all I’m thinking about is how right everything feels.  And I will look back at this another day I’m sure, when I’m up to my knees in dirty diapers and I’m frustrated after another morning of trying to fight for my face when the baby decides to try and pick my eyebrows off my head one tiny hair at a time, and remember that it doesn’t matter because it’s not real pain.

Not even close.

Comments

[hubs]

i'm happy you're happy.
how about some links to the web articles?