[DAY 23 OF THE DEEP END PROJECT]
I looked at the blinking cursor today for over 45 minutes.
“It’s official” I thought to myself “You are finally out of words”
My mom must be smiling from up there.
She used to call me a chatterbox. “Did you get extra helpings from God when he was handing out words?” She used to say.
Maybe I am overthinking today?
Trying to sound intelligent and filtering my thoughts?
That definitely gets in my way.
I have to remind myself everyday about what this project is all about – Self Expression.
And if I am being totally honest, the reason why I feel I don’t have anything to say is because I am good today.
Like I feel good.
And I haven’t felt good in some time.
As I write this I have so much guilt coming up
“How dare you feel good?”
That’s funny right?
Humans are so peculiar.
We want the ultimate happiness and yet our tolerance for happiness is tiny.
The minute we feel it, we start dress rehearsing for the doom to happen.
Even this second, I can think of 10 things that can go wrong.
Infact, I knowingly tried to sabotage my sense of calm, peace and joy by deliberately checking out someone on the internet who I know is a trigger for me.
Gay Hendricks defines it as The Upper Limit Problem in his book, The Big Leap.
Another reason why I couldn’t find anything to say is because I didn’t think sharing my happiness would be worthy to write about.
Especially because there’s no particular reason for me to be happy.
I wasn’t announcing a big sales month, or a client win or some media feature.
The truth is I am happy today just because…..
And trust me, there aren’t many days like that.
But this weekend has been nice.
I got my workout done
I had 2 beautiful meditations
I spent lots of time with my kids and husband
Simple moments. No big deal.
No big ahas, no wisdom to share, no social media re-post worthy stuff.
If it’s simple, is it not worth talking about?
That would be such a shame.
Yet we do this, don’t we?
And if we do talk about the simple stuff, we apologize for it. We feel shame for it.
I do this.
I am doing this now.
All I can think of right now is “oh god if anyone reads this they are gonna think I am such an idiot.”
The truth is I don’t have my shit together.
I am an imperfect woman living in an imperfect world.
I am ashamed to write that I feel shame for feeling happiness for watching a video of my 5 year old playing baseball on repeat.
That brings me so much joy but there’s also a part of me that says “how dare you? What did you do to deserve this?”
Can you relate?
4 years of “self worth” work and this still trips me up.
I have no wisdom or trick to hack this btw.
Atleast not today.
Today I’ll feel it all. The happiness, the guilt, the joy, the shame.
I am all of them today. And maybe that’s okay.