I cannot count the number of "new starts" I've attempted over the last four years, not to mention the last 10...or even 20. I've lived my life obsessed with starting over, starting new, being someone better, bigger...yet every time I start again and swear it's "it" I fall back into the routine of lazy comfortabiliy, no matter how uncomfortable it may truly be. Six months later I realize the little I've progressed and am pushed back into the rut and the routine of yet another "fresh beginning." Maybe my failure is not my inability to stick to my intentions as much as what focus those intentions were made on. Wanting to "start over" implies that I'm unhappy or unsatisfied with where I am presently, to "recreate" oneself or ones life means the person or life I'm living is not good enough and needs change.
And that's just not true.
I am wonderful the way I am...and that's where I must begin. I have to realize that my life is great, and to really appreciate who I am and where my life is. I'm exactly who and where I need to be, a perfect place to start. There's nothing wrong with wanting to elevate the level of one's circumstances...but how much more can we achieve if we realize how far we've already become. Starting over then becomes continuing at an increased rate...and instead of discrediting the last 28 years of journey I've been on and the person I have grown to be I'm simply building on an already tall building. How much better does that sound? How much more empowering and exciting is it to add another floor to two or twelve to a structure that already has ten floors? When building a skyscraper would you rather acknowledge an already sound foundation and base and just add on...or completely demolish what was already built and start from the ground up?
We live in a society where we value the new, the blank slate, the empty lot. We level gorgeous structures to make way for new, but yet what if we instead found ways to simply make what has come before even greater by adding on? Like adding a second floor to a home, or a new wing in an already incredible mansion. Sure the alure of total artistic freedom to build something completely new from the ground up is great...for an architect or a painter. But as much as we are the artists of our lives...our lives aren't rewritten, they can never be so why should we be unsatisfied and want to wipe away the history?
Of course I am not where I hope to end up. I'm no where near the end of my journey and I don't plan on simply sitting back and watching it go by...but I also don't want to start new, start fresh, I am done "restarting" and then being down on myself when six months later I feel I'm no further than I was. That's ridiculous, of course I am...and I know I can go further. I get to create this adventure, I get to write it, so why not write it from the future? Be the future me, do whatever it takes to make my amazing life come to life.
So tonight I decide. I decide to believe in myself again. I decide to praise myself, to acknowledge the strides I've made, and to get excited about the journey to come. Tonight I decide to take the steps, any steps necessary to be the inspired woman I see when I close my eyes and think of accomplishing my dreams. Tonight I rediscover my love of what I do...the passion behind being an artist...I chose to become obsessed in it, with it, by it. I choose to sit down and think smaller. To let go of how I think it should look, to stop expecting perfection and just go for it. I choose to make mistakes, I choose to live fully, to live passionately, to be wrong, to not shy away from my talents and faults. To not care what others may think or say...to not care about what I think...and most of all...to accept myself without judgement, and I challenge you to do the same. What greatness could we all achieve if we lived so freely?
Tomorrow I meet with SBV Talent, a commercial agency, to see if they would be a good fit for me and me for them. I also work a double...and get to figure out how to make my Friday work schedule conflicts work out. Saturday day I am meeting with my classmates to discuss the Seven Habits of Highly Successful People, the first book on the Playhouse West reading list, and Sunday some of us are going to get together and go for a hike and appreciate the cooler weather and each other's company. And somewhere in between I get to journal about my scene for class and begin writing my newly simplified and totally plausible idea for my much talked about web series I get to create. Then it's Monday and errands, and another amazing week begins, and I'll treat each day as the gift it truly is.
2012 is coming to a close, and my life is just opening up further.
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