I’m talking to you women who are going through the motions. You’re listless, confused, bored, frustrated, tired all the time. You seek distraction. You depend on your spouse or your kid or your dog to make you feel needed, seen, alive. Unfortunately, your spouse/kid/dog doesn’t always get it.
I’m talking to you women out there who have thought of a dozen new businesses, but started none of them. You’ve dreamed up new products, contemplated marketing ideas, started little projects… and never gone past the dreaming. You’ve always stuck at the starting line. It wears you down.
I’m talking to you women who feel stretched to the max, pushed and pulled and demanded and needed and wanting to be everything to everyone. But also, inside, you’re wanting to scream because you’ve pushed your own needs down for so long.
I’m talking to you.
Are you listening?
Are you wondering where you went?
Do you look back at photos of yourself and think, “Where did that girl go?” Do you stutter and mumble when people ask you what you’ve been doing lately? You mutter a boring answer like “oh, the job” or “oh, the house” or “oh, the kids” and then change the subject. Are you excited about anything in your life right now, or are you just tired? Kind of bored. Listless.
I don’t buy the boredom excuse.
The world is so full of a number of things… and so are you. You’re in there, stuffed way down near the back, crammed into a little wad behind “money worries” and “family obligations” and “taking care of other people” and “trying to get life figured out” and “large chunk of self-doubt I keep banging my shin on.” Yep. There you are. I see you. Hi! Go on. Give me a little wave.
We need to get you back out into the light.
Let’s talk about something inspiring, something fresh and energizing, something that awakens you… something like house cleaning. Yeah. That’s it.
Look, here’s the deal: some things aren’t a matter of choice or preference but of necessity. House cleaning is a great example. I don’t love it. It’s not a natural high. It’s not my fun activity for the weekend. (Is it yours, because if so, let’s work out a deal…). But it has to be done, for a number of reasons, so we do it. Sometimes finding yourself isn’t about what you do but about how you do it.
You still have a choice and personal expression in even the lowliest of tasks. There are three ingredients:
1. Attitude
2. How you do what you do.
3. Where you put the attention (yours and everyone else’s).
“There is choice involved in the very simplest form of creativity…” says Schaeffer, and then she goes on to say that those “‘if-only’ feelings can distort our personalities, and give us an obsession which can only lead to more and more dissatisfaction” (1).
Let’s take that housecleaning example a little bit further.
I’m not going to start preaching about the atmosphere of the home,
…the sanctity of what you do as a modern homemaker, the benefits for your children… though those issues certainly deserve thought and attention. But let’s just look at you. You live in a house. You don’t want to live in a dirty place. So you clean. You pick up your clothes, you wipe off a counter, you sweep the floor.
You can either do all those things (for yourself and for the other people living in your home) with a grudging, bitter, woe-is-me attitude that can’t wait to be getting to the important stuff in life or you can find a way to make the necessary duties less drudge, more lively. Schaeffer refers to this as “bringing the artistic into life” (2).
I’m not saying you have to don a lacy apron and make sweet love to the vacuum cleaner.
I’m saying get creative, even on the things that are daily ho-hums.
Like this: get your organizational powers to work and make up a cleaning schedule that is the most efficient thing anyone’s ever heard of. Figure out how to get your house sparkly in ten minutes a day. Or this: make your own aromatic, natural cleaning potions, if that’s what toots your horn. Use them to clean your own home, wow your friends with the non-toxic goodness, and start up a side business… Or this: Put on some loud, fast, fun music, your old grubby clothes, give all the kids a dust rag, and party like it’s 1999 while you clean. Or this: wear your Bluetooth and chat up your old friends while you wash dishes, wash windows, wash clothes. Or this: carry a trash bag and challenge yourself to declutter each space as you clean, week-by-week creating the simple, minimalist space you crave.
Why are we talking about housecleaning in a series that is supposed to be about rediscovering the you that got buried under all those cleaning supplies?
Because you have to start where you are.
I’m guessing that even though you feel like you want to run away from home some days, you have a commitment to staying. You love your husband. You love your children. You’re not going to run away, which means that you need to rediscover yourself in that home you have to clean, while you’re with those kids you need to care for, when you’re spending time with that husband who loves you, too.
If transforming your life can’t happen in the daily grime and grind, then it’s not real transformation; it’s just redecorating. We don’t want that. That’s a waste of time.
“We are all in danger of thinking, ‘Someday…’” (3).
Look at the obstacles which those we call great overcame to give action to their passion, their creative impulse. How many other greats are unknown, not for lack of talent, but because they settled down into and hid behind life’s circumstances? Maybe you are one of them. Great people refuse to be defined by situational constraints.
Not a single one of us is meant to live a mediocre life. Every one of us has the potential for greatness, for genius in some way or another. And the world needs all it can get. The vast majority never challenge themselves beyond a little circumscribed circle some person or culture or situation has drawn around them.
Are you one of those?
The vast majority live in unsatisfying, unfulfilling mediocrity due to lack of action. There are several key reasons why we often don’t take action, and we’re going to figure them out. Which statement rings true for you?
1. I don’t want to be, but I feel kind of stuck in the “if-only” attitude, simply because I just don’t see how it’s even possible to make time, space, energy, money or otherwise for anything else in my life.
2. I’m frustrated, unfulfilled but I’m busy with daily life and I don’t even know what I would do if I had the time. Hobbies? Interests? Did I ever have any of those?
3. I know what I want to do – it’s been bugging me for years now – and I know I could make it happen, somehow, but… I just don’t. I’m scared or lazy or uncertain or something, but I just can’t seem to build up enough momentum or even desire.
4. I’m doing what I’ve always wanted to do, living the dream you could say, but really? I’m disappointed and afraid to admit it. If this is “my thing” and I’m not excited about it, what else is there?
It’s time you blew away that smoke screen and figured out how to get back to the you that is excited about life. You don’t even need a pretty journal (but you can go buy one if you want to).
1. Schaeffer, Edith. The Hidden Art of Homemaking. Page 25, 33.
2. Schaeffer, Edith. Page 33.
3. Schaeffer, Edith. Page 33.
