The Message in the Mess

A few months ago, I tried to start up something called Messy Monday, where I would share a short video about the "mess" of the past week or the "mess" of the week ahead and how I was planning on shifting perspective or learning from what happened. It was great for about 5 weeks. Then, I forgot to do one. One turned into eight, and here I am wondering if I should abandon the project or not.

But why does it have to be a binary decision of yes or no? As I started writing this blog post, literally 5 minutes ago, it struck me - why not turn it into a weekly blog entry? Then I don't have to worry about recording, editing, posting, and promoting. Writing has always come easily; it's less scary to write about the messes for me than it is to talk about them, and they'll be something I can easily do when I log into my computer for the day.

Talk about taking a mess and turning around what it might mean.

So, the point of the post is that my mess this week was that I, despite all of my self-improvement work over the last few months, was completely overwhelmed. And I couldn't figure out why. I have spent the last seven years traveling non-stop for work and mixing in trips for pleasure, and now the idea of three trips in 4 weeks was making me want to curl up in a ball and cry.

Maybe that's healing for you? I've finally started to be at peace with my life at home being something I enjoy and also being the thing I want to beautify and embrace, whereas before, I was driven to fix other things, support others, to make external change. Now, a trip to see my favorite musician wasn't an escape I needed, evidenced by the fact that I had not obsessed over planning for it for weeks, adding to my stress when I realized no laundry had been done and now I needed to pack for 2 trips and seven loads of laundry were staring me in the face.

After a chat with my husband, we decided it was best for me to cancel the first trip. Twenty-four hours I could get back to better prepare for the other two trips that couldn't be canceled. It might not seem like much, but it's a huge shift in my thinking. My colleague I planned to visit understood, and as much as I'd like to think that singer would somehow sense I dipped out of the show... it would never be anything he was slightly aware of.

It was a powerful though tiny moment of taking back decision-making in a way that put myself first without carrying some kind of guilt for letting others down or self-hatred that I should have planned better. It's a weird journey.

What are the little decisions you've made recently that have had a personal impact you didn't expect?

What are the binary choices you faced that you realized don't need to actually be black and white?