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If you took me to dinner at any point during my twenties, you would’ve asked me how my week went.
If you asked me how my week went, I would’ve grimaced and told you that I wanted to change my career path.
If you asked me why I wanted to change my career path, I would’ve told you that I hated it.
If you asked me why I hated it, I would’ve told you that I thought selling clothing was pointless and harmful to society. That my gifts—my purpose for being on this earth—were going to waste.
If you asked me what I’d like to do instead, I would’ve taken a deep breath and said, “Well, it all started in childhood…” Half-disassociated, I would’ve rattled off a well rehearsed story about how I was doomed to be unhappy from the beginning. About how my current reality was not the result of my own choosing but instead the result of the expectations I felt I should meet. I would’ve blamed society. I would’ve blamed my parents. I would’ve blamed the girl in my college orientation group who told me, “Don’t major in architecture unless you’re absolutely sure that’s what you want to do.”
If you took me to dinner at any point during my twenties, I would’ve tangled you in my obsessions, fables, and half-truths, so that you might see me in the way I wished to be seen: hurting. Trapped in a prison that I wasn’t ready to admit was crafted by the insistence of my own hand.
After all, if you give a mouse a cookie, he’s going to want to build a narrative. Even if he knows, somewhere deep down, that freedom is on the other side of letting that narrative go.
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A few things I’m thankful for:
- Getting my furniture set up :)
- A beautiful lake weekend with Connor’s family
- Being physically closer to many of the people who matter most to me
Pop culture things I’m thinking about:
A random journal entry:
11.29.22
I am starting to see my job as less of an identity or a death sentence
and instead beginning to see it as a responsibility
A random thought:
A few days ago I was reading my morning “daily meditation” by Richard Rohr. He said something that I thought was enlightening: We’re all addicts. Human beings are addictive by nature.
Now this was freeing to me because I have a lot of shame about my addictive tendencies. I spend a good deal of my time trying to eradicate my addictions, to become un-addicted to things. This obsession with changing myself as I am has become somewhat of an unhealthy addiction itself.
The past few days I’ve been taking inventory of what narratives I’m addicted to. What stories I’m obsessed with telling myself and others. I wonder what kind of freedom I’d feel, what kind of magic would transpire in my life, if I put some of those narratives down or “dropped the rope” as I’ve heard it said.
So far this experiment has left my heart feeling a bit lighter, my mind a bit clearer, and my days a bit more filled with appreciation for who and what I already have. I feel a sense of magic and spaciousness injecting itself into these newly unoccupied crevasses. Before you know it, I’ll be addicted to the idea of dropping ropes!
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Thanks for reading :) Talk again soon.