I get dramatic about birthdays. I love my birthday, and a personal goal is to accomplish something so incredible in life that May 10th becomes a national (or international!) holiday.
I know I'm dramatic. Luckily for the people who are forced to put up with me, I can step outside of myself and see how ridiculously extravagant I get about each new rotation around the sun. That being said, this year feels even more profound than usual. I initially chalked it up to needing some positive anticipation - last year was an overwhelming whirlwind of amazing highs and troubling lows, and this year I know I need more stability and growth. But as I thought about it more, I realized this birthday felt so profound because I finally learned a crucial lesson:
I need to make room in my life to let life happen.
Things have been severely crowded for too long. Moving + baby + work + side hustles + bills + friends + trying not to forget about Bee = a life so stuffed that some days felt downright paralyzing. The most crippling thing was the fact that everything I had gotten myself into, I had chosen to do - so I had no one to blame but myself, and it seemed like no one could help me but myself. Nothing felt optional. I had to go to work. I had to take care of my daughter. I had to pay bills and take care of home repairs. I had to keep up with my freelancing. I had to keep working with the film festivals and magazines and youth groups and projects I was tied to. Everything linked to something else: I kept taking on cool projects because maybe something would pop off and I wouldn't have to go back to my day job after mat leave. I forced myself to do daily social media management for clients because I needed the extra money to help with diapers and daycare. I felt obligated to try to plan events because I thought I had fallen off and wasn't "on the scene" anymore like I used to be. Everything seemed indispensable, so while I started feeling stifled, I told myself I couldn't drop any of it. If I was feeling stressed or overwhelmed, I convinced myself that the problem wasn't the amount of things I tasked myself with, it was my work ethic. I had to find ways to focus, to be more efficient, to make sure I got things done and done well - in short, I wasn't kind to myself at all.
Yes - I have an amazing partner in life who shares many of the responsibilities I named above, but when it came down to the things I do outside of home and baby, he wasn't with me shooting in the gym. The writing, the events, the projects, the work - the choice to do them and the reason why I was doing them lived solely in my head and heart. The pressure I was putting on myself to do them lived there too, so I knew that while HomieLuva is an incredible sounding board, I'd have to initiate any change I wanted in my life on my own.
I started off by doing a basic time audit of my life. My days were full of things to do, but I soon realized that a lot of these things weren't serving me well anymore. There were things I was doing simply because I told myself I had to, and further - I told myself that to not do them was to be a quitter or a failure. When I was honest about what some of these things were doing for me, I realized they weren't doing a gotdamn thing except stressing me out. I could barely stand things that used to fill me with excitement, and it was downright depressing. My next realization was that there was a constant, nagging feeling of some awesome opportunity just within my grasp, but my life was so cluttered that there was no room for it. I felt things passing me by and though I couldn't definitely state what it was that I missed out on, I knew that I literally had no space for anything new - so good things were undoubtedly floating away.
Next, I thought about my current priorities. Taking care of my family, my finances, and investing in myself topped the list. Comparing my priorities to my audit, I realized that a lot of the things I felt obligated to do didn't fall in line with any of my priorities. They may have had a place at one point in time, but things changed and I was now just forcing a square peg into a round hole. There were things I knew I'd have to say goodbye to, say "not now but maybe later" to, say a firm no to - and I had to say it all immediately. Over the last couple of weeks, emails have gone out, calls have been made, and the things that I needed to say have been said. I've finally reclaimed a bit of freedom. I have room to breathe and to just be without having to do, and it's the best birthday present I could have asked for.
I've given myself the gift of leaving room for life. I'm trading in excessive guilt and undue self-imposed pressures for the space to find things to enjoy, inspire me, and help me grow. I'm letting go of things that put some dollars in my bank account, and believing that things are coming that will give me even greater prosperity. I'm clearing things out and making a new foundation, and it feels like I have nowhere to go from here but up.
Let's toast to fresh starts and swift, sustained ascents. Happy birthday to me.