Brain dump after an extended moment of quietness

 As I look out over a receding tide, a flat bed of oceanic bliss gently ebbing and flowing not too far away, I receive from God this simple moment to remind myself that I do not live to work but work to live. 

Let's rewind a couple of months to where this journey recently has taken me.

*insert rewind tape noise but the one you do with your mouth to compensate because you don't have the actual rewind tape noise so you have to improvise*

Hi, it's August 2020 and I'm 28. It's been a cool winter in a coastal city, and I've been struggling with deep sadness, grief, and a tonne of stress. Life centered around work: three days a week at my workplace, and the other gaps in my "schedule" (a term loosely used... veeeeery usely used, I might add) to explore the new opportunity I have to do something that I actually LOVE to do: write.

In 2010, I began this blog. It was so random, mostly nonsensical. There's no rhyme or rhythm to it. As I begin working with SEO writing and blog content writing for other companies and institutions, I realise that I really should revamp it. That said, it has become the primary vehicle allowing me to do three things: express what's on my mind, connect with others on a vulnerable and honest level, and get my writing seen. 

Back to August 2020. I make the decision to move back home to my home town. A place with beaches for miles, rainforests, mountains, and (importantly for me at this stage in my journey with life, grief, and what I would later come to recognise as burnout) the presence of family. I get home, and things just get strange from there. My grief is intensified, the move exhausts me, and though I felt as though I had let go of enough, still I was feeling called to let go of more.

It's really hard when you think that each year, you as an individual are meant to get better, not worse. In hindsight now, on the 4th of November, 2020, I see that I was being unkind to myself to expect what I have expected. A photograph in Memories on Facebook came up just this morning of me in the exact same location as I now sit. In the photograph, I'm smiling, I'm dancing, and I fit into a dress I no longer fit into (internal body image issues activate in three...two...one...). But the caption, OH THE CAPTION. It reads:

"In order to have a top-quality day, your best bet is to get up, get out, and get grooving. And praise God through it all!"

Well, Ruth of November 2019, I just want to thank you. Thank you for this wisdom. Here I am, ironically, sitting and being present. Sure, my body aches, and I can't move it like I could last year, but here I am. Working on myself. No longer reverting to a victim mentality. No longer seeking pity. But also, thank you for meeting me at a place where I made the decision to once again work to live, not live to work. I finally find myself situating myself where stress will no longer drive this party bus that is my life. I finally find myself making the most of this opportunity to work and live remotely. To fulfil that dream that stirred inside me in a little Parisian café in 2013 when I said: "I will write for a living." HERE I AM, doing that. And yet it has taken me until now to switch mindset and value that. 

Oh well. Better late than never *insert tongue poking out emoji*

To work days spent chatting with locals as I muse on theological concepts for social media platforms. To work breaks spent in the ocean that sprawls before my eyes. To that early pm feeling of closing the lid to my laptop and opening my mind to whatever else the day has for me. 

To all of that, and so much more.