"Me"

I just watched a TED talk called "The Art of Being Yourself " by Caroline McHugh.  Amazing talk.  Caroline McHugh talked about "being yourself" and how there are two times in your life that you are truly good at being yourself.  When you're very young and when you're very old, are apparently the times when you are "yourself".  All that time in between "very young" and "very old" it seems you're kind of lost.  That got me thinking about myself. I have been doing some soul searching the past few years and by no means do I have things figured out, far from it.  There are a few things that I'm trying to pull out of the constant "noise" that goes on in my head and understand about myself. So, for this post these are my Top 5 Things about me.  These are things that I want to cultivate and grow, as well as things that I pretty much believe are a big part of what makes me, well...me.

#5  Creative

I've always been creative.  I've always loved art.  I remember taking drawing and art classes as a kid.  I remember in 2nd grade I made a penguin out of clay and I remember how proud I felt when my teacher complimented me on my penguin.  I took many art classes in college and my favorite classes were drawing classes.  When "life" happened (i.e. marriage, children) I stopped drawing for many years and only recently started drawing again.  Something I notice about drawing now...I don't care about the outcome.  It's truly the process for me now.  I don't care if I produce "frame worthy" artwork.  I just want to draw.  

#4   Awareness 

I get so busy doing, organizing, getting my people to and from wherever they need to go, cooking, washing, etc that I don't appreciate those little moments.  I want to be aware of what's going on around me.  I want to enjoy my family while we are all still here.  I've been better at this lately and I want to keep it up.

#3   Fearless

Sometimes I feel like I let the other people in my life dictate who I am.  I know I've spent most of my life trying to BE what I thought other people wanted or thought I should be.  I was the "wife" or the "mother" but I wasn't truly ME.  I know that sounds strange because being a wife and mother is defiantly a part of me, but for a very long time...I let those things take over as I tried to meet some sort of expected version of what those terms meant. I'm working on being "fearless" and doing things I want to do.  I'm working on NOT doing things that I don't want to do as well.  That's harder to do, I think.  I need to remember that it's ME who has to approve of ME...that's it.

#2   Be Healthy

That means every sense of the word...physically healthy and mentally healthy and spiritually healthy.  

#1   I want to be better than I was yesterday.
Some days it's all I can do to just make it through to when I can crawl back in between the sheets and try again tomorrow!  But some days I'm comfortable with myself.  Some days I'm even MORE than comfortable, I'm awesome! So long as I can keep moving forward, that's what I'm working towards.