WINNING TODAY

It is funny how one Instagram follow can change your life and make you ask questions like; “Where have I been??”

I felt like I had left my life so unlived that I forgot what it was like to feel my passions. I don’t even know if that makes sense. So I am a hater. Not of perfectly arched eyebrows and women with red bottomed heels of every colour but of deep women. You know those women who take their 24 hours and manage to pursue a career, work out, drink a healthy smoothie, write a blog post all while having perfectly arched eyebrows and a mane of full tousled hair and a vocabulary that makes English majors lusty. Such women make me want to frown and comment “Ay there stop living my life” on all their photos. This intense hating, turns to insecurity jealousy, then eventually makes me work out for fifteen minutes before I tumble into a Hungry Lion quick pack and wear my full gear of womanity humanity.

I have noticed that I have gained weight. I have finished my first phase of tertiary education and I have more time than I know what to do with. I am making steady progress on writing my first long short story but I know that I haven’t won a Caines prize for my literature or been recognised for it so far so I could easily be wasting my time and electricity. Some of my readers are people I coerce into reading, my cat who sits on the right side of my keyboard while I type and my brother who I emotionally blackmail into reading.

We are made to want so much more, so much that we forget the now. When I started writing this note I was going to complain. Complain about why it is so hard to know what is next, so hard to know our destiny. Why weren’t we just made with a stamp behind our necks that reads “Created to become a … Will marry  ... at Age...  Expiry date 2056 if they don’t ingest cocaine.”  That would have been so much easier than figuring things out and often failing.

But upon interactions with my inner more sensible self. I have realized that we all have solo journeys and in my journey I am appreciative of  the women that win, because I get challenged and they serve as proof that if I work hard enough I can win. That if I believe all can be made possible. We inherit emptiness from our forefathers and while this can serve as a drive to achieve more, all the stuff doesn’t fill the void for eternity, it is never enough. Emptiness also clouds our view from seeing what really matters, it keeps us anxious and keeps us from seeing that even from our little actions made every day we are winning today. And anxiety can keep us in the same spot paralysed with worry. Or moving from one ambition to the next instead of committing, fixing and sticking at it until the end. I felt like I wasted so much time but in reality I collected so many lessons and experiences that combine to make the kind of woman I am made to be. Maybe getting lost in the maze is part of the journey to the finish but only if you keep walking.

I don’t know how people make it out of the twenty somethings alive honestly. It is like having the mind of an adult but the heart of a teenager. So I haven’t been doing what I have to, to get to where I want to go but I can take one step today in this moment and hope that with every step the path gets lighter. I am winning today, with each breath, thought and action, I am winning today.