Highs and Lows

Blame it on the change of the season, or the holidays or……. but it seems like lately I have been all over the map with my emotions. Feeling a desperate need to have more of life figured out, the what I actually do. In a month where everyone is posting the many things we are thankful for, I know that I have so much in which to give thanks. Amazing kids, and their significant others…friends that totally “get’ my kind of crazy, people who allow me the honor of lending my talents for their cause.. a place to hitch my dream wagon.. it is all so overwhelming at times. How could one little girl, from the wrong side of the tracks end up with so much blessing…….? I literally pinch myself sometimes.

And then there are other times that I feel that I should have more figured out. Love, the meaning to life, what I want to do when I grown up… well that one I sort of have figured out… I love this whole Cowgirl interrupted, writer, photographer things I got going..  But, there are still some big life issues that I cannot really wrap my head around, and at 50.. I really thought I would have.

I recall knowing women when I was young who were the age that I am now and I recall thinking that they seemed to have it all together… They seems to have settled into life…. found their bliss… a peace and a contentment that seems to continually allude me.

I have always been restless….. a gypsy soul….. a wanderer…..eclectic in nature…. a need for the back roads with a strong desire for a picket fence and a place to lay down roots. The two extremes playing tug-a-war and I never truly know which side will win on any given day….

My forties brought with it a decade of introspective discovery. I didn’t like everything I discovered. But, I jumped in and changed those things that I knew needed changed. I also took counsel from friends that I trusted and changed those things that they showed me that needed to change. I weeded a few people that were a lot of drama and pain, from my life… a decision I was so glad that I found the courage to finally do.. my life has been better for it.

I am writing this mostly to encourage some that are younger, who worry about not having it all together… maybe, it is okay that we don’t. Maybe it is okay that we don’t settle in to quickly, leaving room for change and adventure and new. Maybe it okay to continue to questions, to weed, to grown and renegotiate our lives, squeezing out the most that we can out of the time we are given.

There are still areas in which I get “stuck”… matter of fact if I were honest, I would have to say I get really stuck….. not just a little stuck… like dug in stuck… but, this much I do know… they are fewer…. in my younger years there were more things that kept me struggling..more questions UN-answered… now… I have learned to not sweat the small stuff… mostly… and the sticky things are just one or two…..

And, while I want to make them bigger than they are…. I’m learning that all I really need to do to get past them is to take a small step to the left or to the right…. blaze a new path.

Maybe, just maybe the fact that I still have highs and lows just means that I am still in the game.. still striving to be a better version of me, still wanting more from this life I have been given… So perhaps, I may not really want it any other way!!!