Three Months

When I was going through my divorce, I did a lot of planting. It still stands out to me, because I frankly hate gardening and the digging and worms and spiders and bugs.  That’s not to say I don’t like worms and spiders and bugs – as long as they stay in their habitat and don’t invade mine. When I’m digging around in the dirt, they are perfectly within their rights to scare the bejeezus out of me, as I’m invading their home. So I generally tend to avoid that activity.

But I can remember getting out my gardening gloves that November weekend when my marriage exploded and I got busy digging and planting.

I didn’t have the words to know WHY I was doing it, only that I felt the need to put something in the ground that would bloom in 8 months time, breaking free from it’s dark place with all it’s beauty and splendor, and reaching towards brighter skies.

It would be a tangible, visual reminder that both me and those bulbs made it through to sunnier days.

It took me longer than those 8 months to re-find my more natural sunnier skies mindset, but I got there eventually.

Like most people, we all have highs and lows.  Life brings us challenges, many we don’t want to accept, but have no choice in the matter.

Many of us have things we are going through that we just don’t talk about. Including me, Reader, which you may find difficult to believe as I write these words and send them off to your eyes and anyone else’s who may be snooping around the internets looking for nonsense.  I’m an open-ish book.  But there are things that we just handle under our own roofs, and those can be the things that try to sink us. Sometimes it’s just piled too high.

I think that’s where I’ve been lately. The pile has been too high. It makes me sleep more and create less. It makes me edgy and yell-ie and chicken-little-the-sky-is-falling. I’ve felt badly about being me – overall as a human, not because of an individual action.

But I’ve been reading and practicing my friend Jabs’ A-B-C’s of gratitude and truly absorbing some of the positive messages that you can find anywhere online. I’ve been loving Mel Robbins on insta lately.  I mean, she said this:

And I’ve decided it’s time to start planting again.  Only this time, I’m going to plant creativity. It’s a lot more enjoyable and a lot less wormy.

I’m writing my to-do list to include CREATIVE tasks, and not just “polish kitchen cabinets with new magic stuff you just bought on Amazon” – which is also an actual thing on my to-do list that I’m going to do today at some point. But I’m going to rework my list, into To-Do and To-Day and it’s going to have a mix of less fun stuff (but truth? satisfying in a measurable way when something goes from effed up to organized/cleaned) and creativity.

I have a new website to build.

I have a vision board to create. The poster board had been riding around in the back of my car for two weeks now. It was never considered “important” when I had so much garage to clean.

I need to outline my little book idea I’ve been writing in my head for the past twenty years.

I want to paint an awful picture. I mean, I want to paint a GREAT picture, but talent does not equal desire in this case, so I’ll settle for what I can do. Maybe – just maybe – I’ll take a class this year.

I want to host a painting a “let’s paint the beach” event at Chez Bang Bang. I have the canvas. And paints. And friends. It’s going on the list for April or May or June. But it’s going on the In the Next 3 Months list.

I want to take some actual skillz classes – like social media marketing stuff. Because I like it, and want to formally understand it instead of my current method of winging it.  It’s going on my To Do list.

So what are you planting today, so that you believe in tomorrow?