Not a salmon

I've mentioned this before, but I'm what you'd call a "hard learner." I tend to engage in the same patterns of behavior over and over, sometimes without realizing it, other times pretending it's not the same and rationalizing the shit out of it. Fortunately I've reached the point that I'm no longer shocked when the results are the same. (I don't know what's really all that fortunate about it, perhaps I'm just a little less stressed out? Or I'm insane, whichever.)

I was stumbling around the interwebs yesterday, looking for decent por...I mean, inspiration, when I found myself at Clay Collins' page. I got there because the author of the blog I was on said that his "about me" page is the best she'd ever seen. I linked to it, but brace yourself, it's a little on the long side and he comes across as a bit of a toolsack. (No, no one ever says toolsack," but I was getting tired of toolbag, not that anyone but me says that either. Whatever. Don't judge me.)

The damn thing is long enough to have sections and I won't lie, I almost didn't make it to the section entitled "The Power of Giving Up." Y'all get the benefit of me having already read his ego-novella, and can just CTRL+F your way there. This is what got me:

So often we hang onto the complete bullshit that society brainwashed us with . . . until we get to the point that we completely and utterly lack the strength to carry on that way.

I read it and was like, "LIGHT BULB!" He goes on to say that when he dropped everything in his life that didn't make him "ridiculously happy," the rest of his life fell into place.

I don't know how it's possible to drop everything in your life that doesn't make you ridiculously happy, because we have to eat, sleep somewhere safe, etc. However, I'm willing to bet that if I cut out a lot of shit in my life that makes me batty, I would be happier and able to spend more time focusing on the things that do make me ridiculously happy.

His next section is called "Purpose is Not Your Savior (And Lack of Purpose is Not Your Captor)." I really had to stop and think about this one because I know I've said on several occasions how I feel like I'm lacking purpose in my life. I feel directionless and it's disconcerting for me not to feel like I'm going SOMEWHERE.

But then I thought about it and I realized that the push to be going somewhere and doing something specific with your life is imposed on us by society. Why can't the purpose of my life just be to do things that make me feel ridiculously happy and really LIVE my life?

The way I see it now is that purpose is like having a goal. I have loads of goals, but if I'm honest about it, I don't often achieve them. I feel 18 kinds of pressured and I just can't bring myself to work to accomplish them. It's like I could never figure out how to make my purpose meet what makes me ridiculously happy. The idea that I don't really have to have a purpose is extremely freeing. Like wearing a skirt without underwear on a windy day.

For me, the biggest takeaway from his post is this:

The only thing holding you down, holding you back, is your inability to give up on anything that’s not 100% you.  And the only thing that can set you free is your uncompromising refusal to do anything that’s not in 100% alignment with who you really are.

I read it and thought, eh, I don't know. I sat with it a little longer, and it was like DUH! When I'm faced with doing something I really don't want to do, it takes me that much more energy to get moving on it. I go through it that much more slowly and that much less carefully. The end result being that I sometimes get to do it twice. Joy.

There's a catch with this for me though - I think I've forgotten who I really am. (I know that seems hard to believe, but it's true.) There are times I do things or spend time with certain people, and I get a feeling of, "YES! This is IT!" But then, in the bustle that is life, I forget about that feeling until I'm doing whatever it was again or I'm with the same person again.

The problem with the bustle is that I end up feeling like I'm swimming upstream and ultimately just exhausting myself. I need to hang on to that feeling of YES! and make it an everyday feeling so that I'm 100% Lyndsy, 100% of the time.

And no, I'm not offended that you were just a little horrified right then.