One little change...

I think on some level I knew that changing things would bring up old-leftover-from-somewhere emotions. Changing even one little thing in my daily routine has already started a ripple effect in my emotions and my beingness. The change was writing every morning, and this is only day 4. I think yesterdays little melt-down was a sign that I'm moving forward in a bigger way than just being up earlier and doing something I love to do. 


Most of us have very regular routines and habits, some of which serve us and some which are so auto-pilot we don't even realize that they have developed as a buffer to some emotion or situation that happened a long time ago. The really interesting thing is that there really isn't a direct corrolation between the habit and the emotion/situation. In other words, I cannot make a direct link between getting up earlier to write for an hour and feeling like I don't matter anymore. It's not a logical connection like if I start exercising, I'll lose weight. At least not at first glance.


I do, though, sense a deep connection between these things. We are whole packages, body, mind and spirit. I think it must be impossible to change anything in any one of those aspects and not have the other two shift into a different space as well. The cool thing about this concept is that we don't need to start with full-on overhauls of our selves to step into the life we really want to live. One little change-for-the-better at a time will send us flowing in the direction of all the "better" we could possibly want.


I've always thought that life is very complex, that people are very complex, that emotions and the thinking process and the world are all very complex. I loved the mystery of it all; the big theories and philosophical wonderings of that complexity. Big theories and philosophical wonderings keep our minds busy - and let's face it, they're fun fodder for into-the-wee-hours conversation.


The thing is, I am coming to realize that those "bigger" ideas are not nearly as helpful to our daily lives as the smaller ideas are. I had a small idea... it really was a teeny-tiny thought... and I'd been having it for a long while, well, consistantly since September 2011. It was soul simple, I need to start writing again. Back then I wrote: 

This is just to start... just to see if I can get the juices flowing again. I know I'm a writer, and I've been away from writing for so long, I thought maybe if I just started -- it would flow back to me.

I used to have so much to say! So many opinions and ideas of grandeur... seems the older I get, and the more I embrace a "live and let live" attitude, the less interested I am in spouting off about how I see things.

But I love the hand-to-keyboard process -- the pen-to-paper equally satisfies -- and maybe if I just put something down here every day... something worth saying and sharing will emerge?
One can hope ;-)

Then, I wrote a few more times in October, nothing in November or December, and twice in January. Now, in June, I've written four mornings in a row. I owe much of this week to Jeff Goins. His little ebook that I "stumbled" on (I don't believe in coincidence) entitled, "You Are A Writer, So Start Acting Like One", was just the well-written, charmingly toned, practical, reasonable, yeah-I-do-that-too reminder that I just needed to make a decision and stick to it... because the one thing about being a writer is  - well - you have to write something.


So this decision to write daily, dropped a little pebble in my pond, and one of the things that hit the shore was this feeling of non-importance with my children. And the cool thing is that after writing all of this this morning, I actually do see a corrolation between those two subjects.


I've been a mom for 34 years. It was just early last year that all the kids were out from under-my-roof (the first two were out on their own when the youngest were just in 1st & 2nd grade), and then a month later my sister moved in for a-few-months-to-get-on-her-feet-in-Long-Beach but didn't move out until a year later... that was last month.


There is bound to be a transitional space of big changes when you stop doing something that has defined you for 3 decades.


All those years that I spent meeting all the needs of four other souls, or as many as I could humanly meet, and now I'm out on the other side. Of course they have their lives, and of course they don't need me (much), and that's the way it's supposed to go/flow/be. I've raised some strong people; some really independent personalities; some good-hearted-almost-to-a-fault people... and I did that intentionally! And I did a damn good job!


Writing every morning has simply stirred-up the new reality that the chapter of my life called "Motherhood" has closed. The constant sense of being "on-call" and ready-when-needed has ended, and the excorsism was a few hours of pity-party that brought a clear realization of something surprising... freedom.


So bring on the Crone years, the Me years, the Being-who-I-always-wanted-to-be-when-I-grew-up years. I'm ready to consider my own needs first for a while. I'm ready to investigate all the little things I can change to make my next chapter more fun, more successful and more interesting.


A mom never really stops being a mom ... and, it's kind of trippy/cool/scary to move that long-held Life-Title from the top spot, down to the Previous Work Experience section of my new bio.