If you ask my siblings, they’ll tell you that for a long time their nickname for me was (maybe still is) the “fun police”.
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I won’t disagree. I PRIDED myself in being a workaholic. First one in, last one out. Putting in hours on the weekend. Playing multiple roles at once. Stepping away from time together to handle “work”. I’d also, from a space of a learned behavior, often frown at anyone’s leisure time. Tisk, tisk. Too weak to survive in the big leagues, eh? In my world of the big leagues there was no room for fun.
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It wasn’t until my gig at VICE was up + my ED finally hit the death wall that I was more or less FORCED to slow down. To pause. To be still. To Surrender. I was a novice at the non-doing. I had no idea how to FILL my time w/something other than nothing. Until I couldn’t even do that. I literally had to STOP. So I did + then the flood of tears came until my wells ran dry, + I found myself at the bottom; empty, stripped, hollow, yet somehow fully alive.
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In hindsight I found FREEDOM from the Discomfort that is The Unknown. I stood up, looked around + saw nothing but a blank canvas. Who did I WANT TO BE? I could start over. I had a choice.
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In the process of DOING so much, I had lost track of everything; friends, family, relationships, desires, dreams, health + ME. As I built myself back up I thought about FUN. What does it mean? I’ve been building up my definition slowly, gently.
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I tell you this because I feel as a society we’ve set expectations. Born again? Show me! Like everything else, we need instant gratification. Healed? Prove it! But I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t work that way. It takes TIME to unlearn years of a certain existence.
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Just last night, even with the awareness of my patterns, I had a hard time sticking to the FUN. Not that I didn’t want to be there, I couldn’t Surrender into the idea that I deserved it; that I’d done enough not to do anything. But that’s a step too. Recognizing the Discomfort + riding it through. Building a new set of patterns. Rewiring the brain. Painting my canvas in my own way.
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I’m working on it + I’m giving you permission to work on it too.