Here's a Thought...or Twelve.

Well my lovelies, what shall we talk about today?

Chick-fil-A?

the fact that I'm thinking perhaps I'm un-American because I watch old episodes of Grey's Anatomy instead of the Olympics....

or....

Lets see...what else is there....

Something I've been thinking a lot about lately is "keeping things simple".....

Sounds easy right, but we humans are just too damned complicated for our own good sometimes aren't we?!

We make mountains out of molehills, we let our emotions get the best of us, and holy moses, our tempers can flare sometimes just because we're hungry, or the humidity's making us "sticky".  We ARE temperamental creatures.

Recently, I was totally holding on to some things that I knew I shouldn't, I kept telling myself, SHUT UP, GET OVER IT ALREADY!!, but there it was, continuing to eat at me and eat at me until I finally unloaded on someone close to me, and man, I tell you, when I heard my whining and complaining and expression of discontent pouring out of my mouth, I was like..."HOLY CRAP, Heather, Would you listen to yourself!?!"

The person I shared my discontent with was of course like "wow, you seem really angry!"  and I was like..."I guess I kinda am!"

My friend was like..."do you want me to.....{insert helpful solution here}...and I was like ..."No...no, it's fine"

And my friend was like "you don't seem like it's fine....."  and of course she was right, in the moment of all of my angst runneth over, I wasn't fine....but once I was done with telling her everything, and she offered to try and help me...I was like..."Nah, you already have....I guess I just needed to say it out loud".  Be vulnerable.  Ever notice how hard that is, to just really be vulnerable and let someone see your insides when they are ugly?  But, once it was out....I felt amazingly better.  My "issue" really wasn't an issue anymore.

Isn't that funny how something so simple, like um, just talking shrinks a mountain into a molehill once again?  I'm convinced that communication is the gateway to wherever you want to go.

But back to keeping it simple....why do we make things so complicated?  Why do we put so much time and effort worrying, bottling things up......?

My good and amazing friend Donna has really been a Godsend to me here lately, I'm a worrier by nature, it's in my DNA, no kidding, I got the worrying gene....and the more I love something, the more important something or someONE is to me, the more I worry about it, the more I worry, the more unstable my emotional state is.  Sure, I've had 34 years of learning how to keep it together at work, in social settings, but you put me alone in bed at night, in my car, in the shower...those moments when nobody's watching, nobody's around....and BAM!  It's like worry fest!  There have been times when the only thing I know to do is to drown OUT the sounds in my head...play loud music, run a belt sander...WRITE, something...anything to escape the reality of the state of my mind!

I swear it's not my intention to be neurotic, and all garbled up by an overactive melon....I think it's just how I'm wired....but what's really interesting about that is that we really do have the ability to be our own electricians.  If you're wired wrong like I am, there's hope.....grab a handful of these:

and get tweaking!  That's tweaking, not tweeting!  Stay with me.....don't open Twitter....if you did, go ahead and close that window now, okay?!  Ok, good.  Now that you're back....

I want to share with you the following quotes:

“There is so much about my fate that I cannot control, but other things do fall under the jurisdiction. I can decide how I spend my time, whom I interact with, whom I share my body and life and money and energy with. I can select what I can read and eat and study. I can choose how I'm going to regard unfortunate circumstances in my life-whether I will see them as curses or opportunities. I can choose my words and the tone of voice in which I speak to others. And most of all, I can choose my thoughts.” 

“You need to learn how to select your thoughts just the same way you select your clothes every day. This is a power you can cultivate. If you want to control things in your life so bad, work on the mind. That's the only thing you should be trying to control.” 

Isn't that something....the idea that THOUGHTS are ours, and damnit if we want, we can learn to control them, instead of them controlling us?!  How amazing is that?!

Elizabeth Gilbert said those things in her book and the Movie "Eat Pray Love"....and while many people did not particularly care for that movie, I've always appreciated it for what it was....maybe not a blockbuster to many, but it packed a punch, right in the gut and right in the forehead on how to deal with yourself, when you're kinda ugly or messed up inside.  We're all that sometimes aren't we?  Reckless.....lost, worried, disappointed, overly analytical?!  Maybe you're not, but I totally can be.  Like for instance, I have a really bad habit of being totally self destructive...when my head's a mess, it's my natural tendency to make my body feel as bad....I smoke cigarettes like it's my job, I can't eat, I can't sleep, pretty soon, my outsides start to resemble my insides and I'm not only half a mess, Oh, I'm a whole mess!  Why on earth does that ever seem like a good idea to do to oneself? 

When you can figure out how to "keep it simple".....I think you get this really awesome thing called "peace"...not "world peace", not a "piece of the pie"...or "a piece"...(which I will say, DOES help calm that mind RIGHT on down, I recommend this, use as needed)....but the kind of peace that gives you calm.  And that calm takes hold and pushes out the nervousness, the jittery worries of things you have no real hope of changing anyhow, and yet we worry.....

Why couldn't I have been born zen?! *laughs*....I think sometimes the most I know actually ABOUT Zen, is how to spell it.  It is spelled Z-E-N isn't it?

I guess if my mind wasn't a bucket of random thoughts and roller coaster emotions.....I'd likely log in here to post simple sentiments of harmony and tranquility.....and we all know, that stuff might fly in the self help aisle, but fiction....to write fiction, you gotta be a little whacked out at times! *smirks*

So what this whole random rambling comes down to is that in life, when the tidal wave of whatever's bugging you starts to wash your rational self away....I tell myself, and you.....try to "Keep it simple"....and to "just keep swimming..." if you can do that, you'll never drown.

Happy Thursday to you and yours,

~Heather Lynn~