learning curve

Here is an apology to anyone who has ever given me sound advice: I'm sorry I'm a little slow.

I realized just this week something many of you probably know already, which is actually what I need to apologize for in the first place. I've found that I can be told something that I guess is true, but then one day weeks or months or even years down the road it will strike me as something new and brilliant. Then I usually let whoever was bright enough to already know of this particular epiphany I vow I will put into action in my life, and they are often heard to say at that point "yeah, I've been telling you...". So I'm sorry. Baby steps, with me, always the baby steps.

Traditionally I've had a large gap between realization and application, a gap I am now aware of and striving to close as much as possible. There's just a difference you feel when casual and accepted knowledge suddenly hits you as something you can't help but act on, and live differently than you had been, and there's a change in the way you approach things.

Today, I believe that it's not too late for me.

words

I find that I like to write when I have an epiphany, or come to some sort of conclusion. But lately I've found I haven't had much to write, and not for lack of trying or disinterest. I have no conclusions. I have no epiphanies. I only have the process, the wondering, the in between. Even when I try to pull back my perspective to draw any sort of material from the things I see and the life I'm living I struggle. There is so much to wait for before a declaration, and it's all so close...

Fear itself

I always thought that one saw how strong they were and how far they'd come after climbing the mountain of whatever trial they were facing to look down upon the journey and know that they were victorious. What I've come to understand, however, is that growth in life doesn't really come from the peaks, it comes from the switchbacks. It's not about standing atop a conquered hardship, it is in feeling like you couldn't possibly take anymore only to be handed something more challenging than the first. It is not in resting- it is in pushing forward.

Fear and phobia have riddled my admittedly short existence thus far. I have a fairly extensive list of phobias that I will probably never be rid of completely, but my bigger problem has been fear. I learned a long time ago to be afraid. And I adapted my life to fit that fear instead of the other way around, as it should have been. I don't think I've made any particularly poor decisions, but I do regret lack of action in a lot of cases. I spent so much time walking on eggshells, often for no reason, feeling like at any moment I would be called out on doing something wrong. My solution was to do nothing, or as little as possible. It was an attitude of fear that explained so much of who I was.

My life has been far more eventful in the last year than the previous many for me personally. I've grown- I'm more capable, and I can feel the change in everything I do. It's been baby steps, and different changes have come over time one at a time. But where I feel the most difference has come in only the last week or two: I am not afraid anymore.