Pivoting Forward

Life without its challenges is a TV show - we don't live that way.

There will be times when trying to make life the best of it you will find yourself back where you started. For some, likely for many, this can be emotionally depleting. I've been there many times before.

As young adults we aggressively paid down the rent to our apartment, then moved into our own brand new home, then life happened. We had to shortsell the house and became renters again... back to where we started..

or did we?

With intentionality and purpose, we regrouped, and a few years later, we were able to buy our own new home again...

We pivoted forward.

I never had a truck, lord knows I needed one. I traded in a nice car to buy my first truck. Hot damn I loved that truck.. I used the hell out of that truck! Ultimately life happened, I had to sell the truck, and in doing so, I had to buy an even worse car than I had before... this was all I could afford... again, back to where I started, but now, a couple many steps backward...

or did I?

It wouldn't be until another 8 years into the future, a future I could not foresee when I bought my next truck. Today, I now own two trucks, one of which is the truck I've long always dreamed of.

I pivoted forward.

Many say that with age comes wisdom, I would argue that. Throughout life as you age, if you are not changing your habits from the lessons you've learned, you will not gain wisdom.

I hated every minute of the backwards steps. Lord did I feel like a total loser. The only thing that I would tell myself then was that the circumstances of today were only for now. I knew I couldn't see the future, but somewhere along this blip of shittyness was a necessary step, forward.

With these and other learning lessons I've struggled through, I find myself being able to exercise this wisdom. Now as similarly difficult decisions/happenings occur, it's the wisdom that helps pacify the sting... there's beauty in the rebuilding of being back where I was.

You can be back if the physical, the mental, emotional, there's a stack of them. We all know when we're back to where we started...

Or are you?

Maybe someday you will have quit a job and moved on... or maybe you've moved out, away from home.. Moons later into the unknown future, that job didn't shake out and today you are leaving that job to go back to the place you left all those years prior. Or that life didn't shake out and now you're back with mom and dad. In the scheme of things are you really back to where you started? It's your perspective in life, the lessons you've learned that prepares you for the steps forward. Metaphorically speaking: Life. Death. ...rebirth. Pivoting forward is hard to see at the moment. It takes a disciplined mind to see through the vulnerability... If you can do that though, if you can draw on the courage to detach from today and register that this, this shitty spot, feeling, circumstance is "only for now", you can lean into that as a sailboat leans into the wind. You cannot see it, but you know it's there. For me, today, this moment of time in my life, I am pivoting backwards, intentionally. I've already been going backwards for well over a year now, I just didn't see it. Self discovery, finding purpose is a bitch of a journey. Only through the wisdom of these 41 years of my life can I see this as such. The current has been pulling me backwards, I have been fighting the upstream battle for sometime now. In the heat of not trying to drown, I have been drowning. In doing so my outlook is alway blurry, vague at best, and I'm fucking tired. With a simple pivot change, although heading backwards now, the energy needed to steer and keep my head up takes a fraction of the effort. Sure I am disappointed about seeing everything again that I just fought through... yeah, that sucks a ton. But the thing is, it's because I was willing to fight through it that gave me a change of perspective. I am still going to get back there, I simply needed to pivot into the opposite direction to regroup. Now I'm not drowning, but I'm not coasting either. Now with the ability to see, I can clean up my mess with clarity and in a surprising outcome, there are people along the way lending a hand, supporting my pivoting efforts. With this wisdom, I can make the rebuilding sustainable from the wisdom of the journey. I know I cannot see the future.. However, wisdom tells me this is only for now. Life. Death. ...rebirth. A rich full life only comes with multiple pivot points, once you see it as a dance, that's when it becomes powerful. Have a grateful weekend.