First off you never know where or how inspiration will hit you. This morning it was this picture:
When I saw it on a friend's feed my first thought was "that's nice" then my second was..."hmmmm...."
Because my brain was starting to whirl with things that you do give up to be happy. Or at least that I did.
One of my favorite quotes of all time is from Joseph Campbell: “We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us." It's all about giving up.
Just not the giving up we think of normally. Not the quitting. Not the whining "it's tooooo haaardddd..." and stopping. Because life is often hard and quitting each time it gets hard would get you nowhere. But even so, sometimes you have to know when to give up.
I'm as stubborn as the day is long, just ask the people that know me best, and I had to learn the hard way that sometimes you really need to just give it up. Let go. Move on. I also have had the struggle with the disease of perfectionism. I KNOW! It's so hard for a lot of you to imagine since I'm so laid back now...
Stop laughing.
But I really was awful about it for a long time. And it's so not helpful when you are trying to get things done. Perfect is the enemy of good enough right? You are constantly tweaking this one more thing, working on this one more polish, and then you never finish. I did it with writing for decades. I would write something, polish, polish, polish, then delete it because it was never going to be perfect. It's a big part of why I do a lot of speed write/post things on here. This is my area where things aren't perfect, but they are done. I have folders of other things that are in the super polish category, and honestly they aren't much better than the things I write and post in a day. Which either says something about the quality of my first draft, or the quality of my polishing.
So what have I given up? I gave up thinking that I would ever be motivated by money. Don't get me wrong, I've been poor and I've been middle class. Middle class is better. Not worrying about repo men or grocery trips at the end of the month is wonderful. But when I was working? I never got paid as much as everyone else because I never remembered to ask for a raise. Now, that doesn't mean it didn't piss me off when I found out someone was being paid more than I was for the same or less work, but that was about fair treatment, not the money.
I have been offered lots of money at different times (and lots is a sliding scale in life, as you all know) to do work that I didn't want to do. It never grabbed me. I have worked G.O.O.D. jobs before (get out of debt) and was grateful for them, but as soon as money was covered by Brent's job? I was out of the money making business and on to exploring other things. While I was in massage school it was sort of a joke that I was going to spend two years and a few thousand dollars to get a job that paid less than half of what I was currently making. Money doesn't motivate me. I gave up pretending that it would.
I gave up being concerned with what people think of me. I am what I am. I know I'm not everyone's cup of tea, and that's okay. I can't control what you think of me, I can only control who I am. And the rest is on you. Now that's not to say that there aren't times where I am shocked that someone doesn't like me, or says something nasty about me, or has an opinion of me that I don't think is valid. But the shock is transient. I'm not going to change who I am for you to like me better. If I've done something truly offensive to you then I will examine it and decide if it's my offense or your offendedness that is the problem. But I am who I am. And I really dig me so I gave up worrying about if you do too.
And in that same vein I gave up on relationships that weren't healthy. We've all had that "friend" that really wasn't right? Energy vampires. Negative Nancys. People who needed to put you down to lift themselves up. I don't have time for that. I give up on those people pretty quickly now.
There are other things, smaller things, I gave up buying shoes that don't fit hoping they would stretch. Life is too short for uncomfortable shoes. I gave up buying clothes that I didn't love, just because they were in style, or someone else liked them, or they weren't trashy as fuck, I happen to look good in trashy clothes. It's just the way it goes. I gave up thinking I would wake up tomorrow looking like Cindy Crawford. My legs are never going to get longer and they are never going to be skinny. My butt is never going to be small and I'm never going to be described as petite. But I haven't given up working out and being the best me I can be, that would be giving up vanity (not there) and health concerns (bad idea) and letting the arthritis settle in and make me miserable (fuck that shit) so I haven't given up on that.
And probably most importantly I gave up giving up cake.
I love cake.
(and I could totally Rick Roll you right now and it would fit and be glorious but I'm not going to. So you're welcome.)
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