At this part of the year, since seasons don’t seem to be defined by a date anymore, rain is necessary. It seeps into the ground, coaxing new growth. Buds on trees, grass thickens, the animals come alive. This rain washes the earth, not like the first rains that melts the snow. New life, fresh air, the smell of mud, a rich soil mud. Connecting with nature, grounding your body with calm and expectation of change. It does something. Sure it’s frustrating, the dampness and the grey air never quite giving way to the sun. It is a promise of something better.

It inspires hope, patience and desire for all that is yet to come. We remember that the sun will come out and we can be lifted from the overcast that is all around. I think the mind changes too, clouds lift and so does our spirits. I heard peepers this week, saw worms on the ground, the morning is filled with bird calls. If nature knows, so should you. Animals are preparing for the bounty of this crawling approach to summer. As much as I detest daily mud laden dog prints, I wait for it to pass.

Celebrate the season arriving, let it motivate you to feel renewed. Just like the rain replenishes the earth, let it fill you up and revive the drought the winter may have created. If it brings a good day, stick your bare toes in the grass, look at the sky and be one with nature. I know spring isn’t for everyone, mosquitos, allergies and other things can take the joy away. Take any piece you can that brings something good to you.

Look for the positive, in a world full of easy negative energy, don’t get pulled in. Whatever will be, will be. I have been stuck in a negative funk lately, dull, lack lustre, my cup half full has been empty. Anything negative seemed to latch on, I have been so hyper aware of every muscle group in my body. I have resigned to put up and shut up in a positive way. Not ignoring but being kinder to myself. Not today is okay. Feeling unfulfilled and down fixes nothing. Saying no repeatedly and putting aside guilt that goes with that.

You have to be creative with your energy. Give yourself a break. Turn the frown upside down, or my husband’s mantra, “ Put on a happy face.” Here I would insert eye roll if his kids were to read this, they surely would be doing a hefty one. My own positive mantra’s have receded and I need to get back to those. They ultimately are the ones that matter. They are the ones created to drown out all the others. I will make some pledges to myself and climb out of the grey I am in.

How to get out of a funk? Live! Shower, get dressed, leave the house. Put on music, talk to humans, fresh air. I had all of it on tap, time to turn the faucet on and fill the cup. Sometimes you get stuck, it is okay. We do know what to do to overcome. Whatever it is you have to overcome, doesn’t disappear but you can live with it. Que sera sera!

Waiting on someone or something is a royal pain. Doing it yourself is all fine and dandy if that is how it worked. You can start missions and ideas and advocate, but relying on someone else for completion is like watching paint dry. You are ready, it is go time but yet you sit and wait for .. well the missing puzzle piece I guess. It’s no wonder people give up before they can really start. Gives a different view of finishing what you start. To make a difference in this lifetime you have to be fierce and navigate every obstacle.

It starts with one, I do believe that. You want to change the world, start with you. I have often thought of foundations I would create if there were no obstacles. I have no idea what the obstacles would be, just life has taught me, that there will be. My foundations wait, but what if I took another step, just to see. If that step moves things forward, another step. Wait to see what the obstacles were and ask for help. Ask for help? My mind tells me, ask for help, you no longer guide that idea, it doesn’t belong to you now. If it is truly something that would make a difference, who cares. Are you doing it for recognition or truly making a difference?

You can’t let fear guide you. One step, then another, what can you lose? This is where it ends if you don’t try. How many of us have ideas that lie dormant foiling them before the first step is even taken. I remember talking to my dad about making something.. no clue what it was now but we were excited and talked about patents and making drawings. Back then there was no internet with its savvy tips and guidance to get things done. There was no Dragon’s den to back a solid idea and market new things. I will have to try to remember what it was, but it was the first of many swallowed ideas. Even if your idea isn’t a product, maybe it is a petition, maybe it is fighting for a cause you think is important. Take a step, not baby steps like we talked about in the past but a whole leap of faith, what have you got to lose?

Life is a puzzle, spend days putting it all together and others days looking for an elusive piece. Grouping by colour, pattern, edges, and it does come together. In the meantime, just reset. The funny thing about puzzles, they can be on a table for a while, but they always get finished. I haven’t done a puzzle in a long time, well a grown up puzzle. I used to do one over the holidays and I really liked doing them. I have no idea why I stopped. I think it had to do with littles around and then lack of space to put it while it was getting completed. I started to lack the joy of completing the task. The reward wasn’t big enough.

I guess with so many years of being busy, I just enjoy days of no pressure, assumed or otherwise. We forget about lots of things that we used to do. Middle life is about finding out who we now are. What really puts pep in our step. Deciding what we haven’t done and what is it that we really want to do. Figuring out what set you back and how to proceed. Most of the time I am pretty content. When I find something that makes me genuinely happy I keep that piece. The challenge in the life puzzle is discarding the unwanted pieces, it can feel like an incomplete puzzle. Life offers us a chance to change the shape of our puzzle. Realizing it wasn’t a dog all along but a fierce dragon is a different type of reward.

Your dragon is your power that you can draw from. Settling for the dog is a disservice to your happiness. Discovery is eye opening and so many times in your life you don’t even see it until you work your way through it. It is the work that gives you the realization of what you wanted all along. Try to surround yourself with things and others that don’t create conflict in your emotions and ultimately your goals. Discovering a goal after you’ve achieved it is a bonus. The goal is in your peripheral vision and sometimes it is something you didn’t even know you wanted. Some days the incomplete puzzle just looms there taunting you to make decisions in the now. Don’t rush, enjoy the sorting, select your pieces at your leisure. Create your masterpiece!

I am not one for numbers, they remind me of my OCD phase. How many times I had to check for my keys before I locked a door. What number could I get to before I finished a task. So much random counting. Surveys on a receipt or after a meal. How do you rate things? How much do you disagree with a statement? Numbers are so impersonal. In your day how much time do you waste? Give a percent. I like words, I don’t think things can be simply represented by a number. The last person you interacted with, how would you rate the interaction? How would you be rated?

These types of things are too black and white for me. It doesn’t factor in the grey areas of life. Tasks, relationships, quality of time, discomfort, they are multi dimensional. Negative energy affects outcome. Rate a day in the park… after twenty minutes it started to rain, you had to pee, there was a huge dog off leash. Some people just take things in stride and some can’t. Pivoting on the pole of life, internal compass, adaptability, making lemonade out of lemons, different strategies people keep in their pocket to call upon in a pinch. Even the most well equipped people can be at a loss when presented with problem. Anyone can be flustered in a situation that normally wouldn’t make them miss a beat.

Numbers just don’t tell the whole story. You have to consider the human factor. Everyone has limitations that can change from day to day. Wake me up after I have been totally asleep for twenty minutes. Ask me thirty questions that need answers before my first coffee is done. I think I do okay under pressure, but I will need a minute afterwards. You can’t always predict outcomes, we are ever changing. I hated squash for 23 years… and then I didn’t. The human condition is complex and contradictory, probably why there is no manual at birth. One minute you know and the next you don’t, we evolve with our experiences. How likely are you going to remain the same person… on a scale of 1-10?

We all have an expectation for our lives. Things we want, need, crave! There will always be things that set us back, that is life. You need to only worry about what you control. How you approach things, and how you receive things. What can you give to this life you lead? You can not predict outcomes and that’s ultimately what scares you. You can live in the negative and be lead to believe it doesn’t get better, but at the bottom we can only go up. I have watched it my whole life in others the strength and ability to go forward regardless. You have to, you really do.

You might be trapped in a body that doesn’t operate the way you want it to. One illness, injury sets everything off course. Don’t give up, mental stamina and energy gets taken up by so many things, clouds the vision and perspective. Set your sights lower for a time, focus on wellness in whatever form you need it. It doesn’t have to be perfect. When I had my first child, before the internet, I read every book about childbirth, infants, parenting that I could find. I remember there was an article saying that a baby is rated at birth on a scale to ten. At this point, I don’t remember the name of the scale. After my daughter was born I was interested to learn the rating of my new baby. The nurse told me she was rated at a nine. I was so alarmed, wondering what possibly could be wrong with my baby? The nurse met my dismay with this response, “ Child, if this baby was Jesus Christ himself… he might get a ten.” Exactly what you need to put your mind at ease in this life. Nothing is perfect.

You can dissect everything in your life and still come up short. If the world ended tomorrow, how would your life be rated. Nothing is ever perfect. Enjoy it, whatever is thrown at you. Don’t live in the past or the future, just right now. Just what you can control. Forget everything else. Hindsight is 20/20 and the future comes ready or not and you can not predict the outcome. Just live the best you can, one day at a time. The best version of yourself is what you can control!

Sometimes the sideline is the best place for you. Reflection and internal analysis. You think the worst things are actually good for you and the universe knows what you need more than you do. You need to listen too hard to hear the whispering voice that you continually drown out. What you want and what you need can be to very separate things. Loud noise, outside interference, erasing your own true needs. Why do we put others ahead of ourselves? The empathy inside can keep you silent, ignoring your true self. Be you always, and if you bend to a distorted form of yourself, you eventually break to your internal whims, wants and needs. It can be liberating to let yourself out of the internal cage you keep yourself in.

Being into something that continually breaks you down, you may not even realize the restrictions you put on yourself. It could be simple habits, it could be just staying inside your own head too much. I try to change one thing a week to increase productivity, health and happiness. When you find the perfect combination, stay with that. How old do you have to be to have these realizations? Often you have a vibe that works very well and then life changes and those same things don’t work for you anymore. Growth is good, and sometimes you need to return your root self, the person that perhaps gets buried by life passing by. Society has expectations and hopefully you are not still doing things to please others. Do what feels right for you!

Slow it all down, I know life doesn’t always afford us these luxuries. Do it anyway, take the time, meditation, therapy, be selfish for five minutes. If you ignore yourself, you will never feel better. It is mostly women that suffer from so many autoimmune illnesses and other invisible illnesses. Stress ladies, you will look after no one if you don’t look after you. Internally, externally, mentally, get her off the bench and back in the game. Don’t ignore pain, illness, injury, burying it under your brave face, guilt, and expectation. You can try to bury it.. your body won’t, everyone is a reaction to their environment. You don’t carry the world, stop trying to!

Insert insanely long sigh….I need a reset button. I don’t know what has to reset, but whoa I seem to have hit a wall. I feel like I am on a survival show ready to tap out or get voted off. I don’t know if it’s the weather, time, moon, temperature? It’s like a false start to a race and my early take off has me depleted before everyone else. Helpless, hopeless, a child said to me today, “Your hair is all sticking up.” Good to know it shows too. I need a team to fix me right now, and I can’t articulate what I need, because I have no sweet clue. Thus the need for a reset.

I keep going though, pulling from somewhere bigger than I know. Maybe it is a hard reset…like a phone, do an update, shut down and restart. Control, alt, delete, something like that. I need some sleep and I have been sleeping! I actually came home one day and hubby sent me to bed, and I still slept that night. It has to be the wonky weather, all four seasons in a week. It is hard on the head. I have had on a parka, hat, mitts and winter boots one day and rain gear another to short sleeves all in this week. That messes with something, I am sure. Maybe picking a season, will help picking an emotion. Regulating the temperature might regulate the mood. Maybe this is why bears are angry when they come out of hibernation. That and hunger, I have been starving!

I’ll figure it out, I always do. I will keep doing self care, feels like self preservation. Maybe this weekend I will just eat and sleep until I feel normal. Not sure how I can feel overwhelmed and lazy at the same time. I look around and I am pretty sure I am not the only one with this internal fizzle right now. Happy spring or third winter or whatever this is? I am hopeful that I can put away a coat this week, that I don’t have to dig out again!

With age come wisdom, not necessarily. Experience that you can draw from, mistakes you have learned from not really wiser just more info in your brain that may or may not help others. People need to come to their own conclusions. You can offer advice, doesn’t mean someone wants to hear it. Even when someone asks they only hear what they want to hear. Conclusions are drawn from your shared information and the message is perceived by how it is received. Was it the message you had hoped to impart?

Opinions are not facts, you are not an expert and even if you were there is always a limitation. I like tried and true versus all brand new. I hesitate at new things because of outcomes. Like dipping your toe before plunging both feet. Does it mean that it is right? Not always, commitment is giving your all, knowing you might fail. We all hate to fail, but it is how we learn. Failing can hurt, but so does not trying. What if, should be, could be is always going to exist. We won’t always arrive at a hundred percent certainty.

You will always be plagued by the risk to reward ratio. It is personal for everyone, gut feeling, expertise, and experience all have a part in it. So does fear, that is the one to overcome. I don’t like to share my vision or ideas with others, my own doubts are enough, I don’t need others to help them find a permanent residence in my mind. Even the most well intended conversations can create doubt. I reserve my doubts when listening to others for this reason too. “What do you really think?” That is hard, what do they really want you to think? I always think good things, I am a glass half full. A realist wants it all, a pessimist will really take the truth hard. I am an observer and the way the message is delivered is key. People arrive at their plans like a four year old, you can see the emotions on their face. Like responding to that child, you wouldn’t dash an idea down with complete disdain. Be gentle, be kind, offer a few tips.. then let them be to see for themselves. Then be there for the outcome, it might be a celebration.

Personal mile markers sure would go easier without obstacles.Setting up goals and plans are like using a recipe. First step, fire up the oven, gather ingredients and start preparing. Nothing worse than either getting everything mixed and forget to preheat the oven, or be missing a key ingredient. That has been me lately, I go all in and have forgotten something. You can delay or scrap the plan. It gets costly starting over, not just money, time as well. It can be exciting starting new things but having to add in some patience has not been my strength lately.

What do you choose? Starting over or delay? Starting over can be a waste, but delay can also ruin the batch. Life is like that, not real simple solutions. Failure to complete a started mission can be extremely frustrating. No answer is the same. Having to prioritize your goals is not easy either, sometimes they weigh the same. What is the answer, how do you arrive at your personal best? Those my friends come from within, what you are willing to live with. Maybe creating a new recipe, or just be happy to be in the game.

We all live in our personal boxes, we set up our walls, we draw the goal line. You create your own space, and have real and invisible barriers. It is up to you, it really is, some days you have to dig deeper and sometimes it all roles into place. It’s okay to not succeed the first time, the second, the third. Just try your best, never give up, and create a version of you that makes you thrive.