Ch-ch-ch-CHANGes

This past calendar year has been hard, COVID-19 notwithstanding. Even if we took that particular challenge out of the equation, it still would have been an epic shitshow of unparalleled proportions.

Aptly described best, I believe, by the late, great David Bowie (paraphrased):

Changes. Turn and face the strange. Don’t want to be a richer man. Changes. Turn and face the strange. Just gonna have to be a different man.

In the past calendar year, the following happened:

• My husband and I separated
• If we want to pigeonhole it, I experienced what is typically termed a “midlife crisis.”
• My sweet pug, Scarlett, died, and, among other things…
• I lost myself.

Thank God I didn’t buy a new Corvette or start banging my secretary. Just, you know, started taking improv classes. Lost thirty pounds. Bought a BMW and went to Mexico for two weeks instead (not in the car).

And really, really started looking inward on a journey of self introspection, understanding, knowledge and growth. Just like Bowie, “I turned myself to face me.”

Trust me, I did NOT intend to set upon this journey. Oh, no – I thought I was quite comfortable where I was. Had it made, so to speak, with my –

• Enormous, unusual, beautiful house on land with nature and animals that was a total safe haven (That cost an arm and a leg, and I eventually realized I was slave to),
• Super supportive husband who loved me deeply…but we’d fallen into a rut and were merely going through motions,
• Business going gang-busters, but that was snowballing out of my control, and I was burning out, fast, and
• A deepening, widening chasm of emptiness that no amount of work, alcohol, weed or ice cream seemed to fill.

Like Bowie, “every time I thought I’d got it made, it seemed the taste was not so sweet.”

Therefore, in a “scorched earth” mentality, and with the help of countless supporters (friends, family, my therapist, and countless hours of reading and self-discovery), I made changes. More like Changes, with a capital C.

Actually CHANGES.

What’s changing? Well, there’s the obvious external stuff (sold the house, moved to a rent house less than a third of the size, made profound changes in the business)…

But these are outward manifestations of internal shifts. I want to live a life more in line with MY values, and not those of everyone else’s (my mom’s, my childhood, my upbringing, society, etc etc)…but that means I first have to really identify and clarify my values.

Do you know how HARD that is???

As life prepares to “hang half a hundred on me,” (ah, Barry Switzer, God luv yah), I have chosen –

• Not to take control of everything, but to seek to evaluate and understand,
• To be proactive instead of reactive,
• To truly identify MY core values, and live in accordance with them,
• To take things back to the beginning and rebuild my life – marriage, family, work, hobbies – on MY terms, not what I think others want of me,
• To get less caught up in what I have, and develop who I am. At the end of the day, I’m not my house, I’m not the car I drive, I’m not my address, and I’m not the size of my tax return. This is a very hard lesson for me to learn.
• To maybe get another piercing or a tattoo. (In the Land of Debutantes, from which I hail, this is Frowned Upon.) Haven’t decided yet. But I get to decide.

If the pandemic has taught me one thing, it’s that the world is going to CHANGE around us, without warning or a moment’s notice, when it damn well wants to.

What we choose to do in the midst of such circumstances is, well…our choice.

Choose wisely.

~HM