Building & Beginning.

Lately I've been thinking a lot about the concepts of building and beginning. 

That focus on one small thing at a time - building to mastery by starting with the basics - isn't foreign to me but I love seeing it play out right in front of my eyes.  
Learning a new skill or sport or art form or way of being takes time and repetition.

It takes doing the same move over and over and over again. That move may involve a paintbrush or a pen or standing on your hands or lacing up your shoes or yelling kiai or sitting at a wheel or looking through the lens over and over and over again. And it takes a willingness to be bad at it in the beginning.

We all have to start somewhere.

Lately I've needed to remember that for myself. We don't begin at the end - we begin right where we are with what we have right in front of us at any given point in time.

At what point in our lives do we forget that it takes work to learn a new skill? Or maybe the more appropriate question is, at what point do we stop being interested in putting out the effort to be a beginner again? Do you have the expectation either that everything should be super simple and you should be an immediate expert OR that it's simply not worth it because there is too much effort involved?

There's so much beauty in the building. 

Burnt & Broken.

This one, this is everything. 

Happy [Hearts].

Admittedly, I am not a huge fan of Valentine's Day.  I think people should show their love each and every day. I'm corny like that.  I do love how girly it is though and hello, a holiday that loves the color pink as much as I do? Yes, please. 

A Case Of The [Should] Have Beens.

I have never really been a backwards thinker.  I have never understood the need to.  My past was always my past and then I moved right along.  There was never any room for "what should have been" or "what could have been." ...and then in a blink of an eye, a matter of mere milliseconds, there I was staring down my own beliefs. Without will or want challenged everything I had ever known.  If I wasn't one to look back, then where did my past belong?  It was no longer in my present moments. It wouldn't be a part of my future.  For many many many months,  I wandered along in this world, aimlessly, holding on, with white knuckles,  to every single solitary strand that was woven into my past.  ...and when I was forced to come back to the present, I had to be dragged kicking and screaming. 

It was in my backwards life and I needed and wanted to be there.  It took a long time for me to come to terms with the fact that it wasn't coming back.  I'm not sure how or why or when it happens, but one day something settles and it all becomes a bit more clear.  

Most days, the clarity and I dance along.  
I understand it. 
I accept it. 
I am at peace with the fact that this is my life now. 

This is my story with chapters of empty pages still waiting to be written.  But then there are other days where, for no rhyme or reason at all, the clarity twists and blurs and I am left staring down the hallow.  At the end there is a deep throbbing ache entangled in missing.  I have learned to just go along with it.  If pushed aside or avoided, it does not go away.  It simply sits there and waits for you until you are ready to acknowledge its presence.  So I do.  ...and I am forced to realize all over again that life truly is a delicate balance of letting in and letting go.  

It's constant. 
Revolving. 
A gentle cycle.  

As I move forward in this life, I realize that it's up to me to keep it in my present and my future.  

For my sake.
For my family's sake. 

It's here every day nestled deeply into my heart and into my thoughts.  

Most days...most days I do accept it...but there are most definitely the other days where I am paralyzed with what should have been...