When my world gets small

I want to rearrange

the components of it

just to feel something different

something meaningful

something extraordinary.

When I don’t have access to my friends

I want to implode my relationship

to “make room.”

When I limit my socializing

I want to make enormous plans

that I never begin reaching toward —

and then feel badly about myself

for not getting to the moon.

When I stay in and don’t travel

I want to quit my job

and seek an exciting change

of scenery for a dopamine hit.

When my world gets small —

which it did during COVID

just like the rest of the world —

when my world gets small

my ego has had a tendency

of retaliating – it lurches.

But, I’m catching it.

Eeny meeny miney mo

catch my ego by its toe.

When it hollers — stay the course!

My thirties have brought me

clarity on these surges.

Clarity that I am more than

the push and pull of my ego.

Clarity that my stable life

is not a fright to run away from

it’s a cushioned couch to sink into.

Clarity that I can make my world

just a little bigger

in purposeful ways when

I begin to feel antsy, stuck, or impulsive.

Are you like me?

Do you want to feel something

big, meaningful, and different?

And have you blown up your life

in the past

in order to feel alive?

Welcome to the tug-of-war

that desire and stability play!

This is one of my reasons why

I have to sit quietly with myself.

Why I have to write.

Why I have to read,

Why I have to do the work

and have a coach

and sometimes a therapist

and many times a friend in myself

to scoot over

and let me sit in this messy learning

for a bit.

And so it goes, on repeat in my mind:

“Every day in every way

I am getting better and better. “

And so are you.

Xo