Recreating for a living...

....I wish.

I was recently asked, "Do you just recreate for a living?" I was a little confused because I read it wrong and was thinking re-create, like create myself over and over again...but then I realized it was recreate like recreation...which could also be re-creation...so now I'm confused AGAIN.

Anyway, I was asked if I recreate for a living. I started thinking about how social media can really mess stuff up. We post our highlights and all the fun stuff we do. I mean no one wants to see me hard at work....right?

Working hard.....?

So we post the fun stuff. Like all this:

Doing a Ropes Course......AWFUL.

SUPing with my best bud.....

Sweaty sesh with my Swole Sisters!

Backpack shopping for my backpacking trip.....

Lifting heavy stuff and getting strong!

So we post our highlights...and people see them and wonder if we actually do anything else. Well I assure you I do.  And I try to be real and not post just the good stuff....but sometimes it is my way of trying to stay positive, to remind myself that even though I just faced a lemon storm there are good things in my life. I am OK and I am moving forward.

So yes, I recreate.  A lot. I don't watch TV.  I don't play video games. I rarely sit still. My house is a mess. I have dishes in the sink. My laundry is piled to the roof. But I enjoy every minute I have that I am not adulting. And it's great!

So go ahead, post your highlights! I wanna see!

So I guess I'll just blog about it....

....when life throws you lemons they say you should just make lemonade. Well I think I'm at the point in life where if life is throwing me lemons I'm ready to look at what I'm doing. Why am I always getting lemons thrown at me? Wrong place? Wrong time? Bad decisions? Bad luck?

I can't really say I've had lemons thrown at me, per se, recently. More like I saw them coming; saw lemons flying around, acknowledged they were in fact lemons coming my way....watched them fall just short of my face....and decided instead of walking into them... I am not walking into that lemon storm again. Sometimes you have to walk away. Or let the ones throwing the lemons walk away, or stay there, in the lemon throwing mood, and just throw their lemons. But I am not going to let them throw them at me. Avoid the lemons. That is what I am trying to do.

I don't think I will ever understand some behaviors; people who intentionally hurt others or who blatantly disregard others feelings, knowing it is going to hurt. It's not hard to look past your own nose for just one second and ask yourself, "How will this affect them?" But I have been alive long enough to realize that some people cannot look beyond their own nose and will justify every action and never take responsibility for the lemon storm they single-handedly created. The only thing I can do is realize that it's not about me, my worth, my value. It's about that person's inability to be honest, to think about what they are doing from a perspective other than their own skewed, self-centered, irrational perspective. But the fact is in life every action has a reaction. Every decision we make will affect someone else. And sometimes those decisions are hard. And people do and will get hurt. Fact. But we can minimize the pain, minimize the damage caused, by simply thinking about it and being honest. It's hard. Without a doubt being honest and hurting someone is hard. But I promise you, the truth only hurts for a short while, but the pain caused otherwise can hurt for a lifetime.

So I'm just here, changing my life direction so I can avoid the lemons that have filled the path in the direction I was headed. And this new path will be great too....because I have a choice and I chose kindness, love, and forgiveness...

So excuse my while I go rearrange my life and explore this new path....

***and no darkness as vast and deep as a selfish heart.