Elegance

Elegance is when the inside is as beautiful as the outside.

– Coco Chanel

Relieving the Pressure (You Put On Yourself)

Tonight carries a certain sort of mental twilight… the kind that emanates from a peaceful state of mind. It streams out of methodical, rhythmic actions, flooding the cracks and crevices of the remaining evening – all resulting in your head just falling on the pillow, feeling content, sleepy and null of those pesky anxieties that keep us from that REM sleep.

These nights rarely occur during a weekday and, knowing this, I stopped myself to put my finger on it. Why was tonight different from any other weekday? What put a subconscious halt to my eternal hamster-wheel of a brain?

I took the pressure off.

I didn’t pick up dinner ingredients. I grabbed Chipolte on the way home. I didn’t debate if I was too exhausted for the gym. I just got up and went… and worked my literal ass off to the point of looking part-radish, part-human. I didn’t force myself to be in bed early. I sat at my desk and started churning this out. 

These are not particularly ambitious or particularly indulgent things but I stopped worrying about meeting a personal quota or agenda. I simply lived and told myself, “this is enough… I am enough for today.”

Nights can’t always be this mentally calm. I will stress about that looming credit card bill or planning that weekend trip or whitening my teeth or whatever other random concoction I need to feel that buzz of stress and 5 minutes of satisfaction for getting it completed. But in this night where I simply let myself live, I’ll remember that taking the pressure off feels so much better than falling into that black hole of “you haven’t done enough.”

Those little bricks will create an eventual big house and no matter how small, they still keep you growing… that one workout, that one blog post.

Pressure off 😉

Ignore the text… this was drawn at work, on the back of a document.

Do

“Do what you have to do until you can do what you want to do” – Oprah

Wise words from a major mogul

Boundless

You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.

– Maya Angelou

Be

Be an encourager. The world has plenty of critics already.

– Dave Willis

Life Happening vs. Goals in the Making

Sorry I’ve been gone. Life always seems to be a strange blend of impulses that have to be satiated and regiments that leave no room anything outside of the to-do list. Writing a blog post has been neither an impulse or a necessity towards the path of short-term successes… so its been on a back (BACK) burner. I also realize it tends to soothe only one soul, my own, and hangs low on the totem pole of goals because not too many people read this and if you do, well thanks! And I hope it is enticing and valuable to your brain/heart/whatever needs to be fulfilled.

Well this morning I woke up earlier than anticipated, got out of bed, got back in bed, realized I didn’t want to leave that perfect atmosphere of cozy duvet during morning chill, perused my news feeds (junk but that good kind, like the Jerry Springer of news articles) and finally realized another snooze wasn’t gonna happen. Slipping out of bed, careful not to wake the sleepy bunny next to me, I tip-toed to the couch and sat without distraction staring off into the light trickling through the shades.

I thought back to when I had many days “off”, when I was looking for  a job in this massive, overqualified city of ambitious and brilliant people. I thought about how its been almost a year since we moved here and how things have progressed but changed in ways I didn’t anticipate. The job I got in the industry I never expected with opportunities I never entertained. It reminded me of how irritating it was to hear the question,

“Where do you see yourself in 10 years?” 

Uh. Somewhere where I’m ten years older, hopefully ten years wiser and have more than $500 in my bank account? The last two years have been multiple series of “what the hell am I doing?!” and its enough for me to see that life changes A LOT. If I had a solid plan of exactly where I wanted to be, I’m pretty positive I would be too narrow-minded to make the changes I need to live in accordance to whats needed to really use up my full potential and LIVE. But in the same sense I definitely see that goals and ambition are important, they remind you that life cannot be built off of convenience or simply necessity. You have to step outside of those boxes, stay on the path toward your goal and not fall into a comfort zone.  

I guess the best way to put it is –  create goals for yourself because they are vital to staying alive, but don’t create such a massive plan that when life happens and presents you with a hidden little nugget of gold, something that seems rough around the edges and not quite your grand plan, that you’re outside of your dreams enough to see that those goals can develop and be achieved in unforeseeable instances.

I was reminded that maybe my lack of writing was really just letting life get in the way – with its odd blend of comfort-zoning and finding dire need in small achievements that quite likely won’t make a difference in 5 years but seem like a really big deal right now. So I let those things get there fifteen minutes of fame in my life and I sat on the couch just a little longer than usual after work – but I remembered goals don’t come to fruition out of brainstorming while watching Netflix or eyeing my unfinished painting and thinking about how I’m gonna get it done tomorrow but I totally don’t have time right now.

Goals are met by always biting off a little more than you can chew and continuously taking something on, regardless of if it seems like a big deal or a little deal in life. Stating the obvious here, but sometimes the obvious needs to be stated a lot to be heard and processed and utilized.