All the Small Things
yes, that is a Blink 182 reference.
I can’t improve my life.
I can’t implement your advice. No matter how many tips and tricks you try to teach me for improving my life, I still sit here stuck in the shittiness of each day as they are and forever will be.
Again and again, I make the same mistakes, fall prey to the same pitfalls, and descend into the same corrosive habits.
I’ve read the books, I’ve listened to the TedTalks, I’ve even written myself in the holy pages of my journal, and still, I ignore it all.
I ignore the small things.
When the rubber meets the road, all the self-actualizing information I’ve so eagerly accumulated, hoarded, and attempted to hammer into my being gets left behind.
Like a spray of water from under a tire before it actually makes contact with the road, so my knowledge of what I should do is thrown to the wind as my thoughts become actions and the rubber meets the road.
A slew of helpful strategies I could use to change my life streams through my consciousness; one hundred tiny drops of information flowing together. And as a stream, it continues on no matter how long I stand on the bank and hope something magical happens.
I don’t make my bed.
Did you know the tiniest act of making your bed in the morning can change your life?
Or, so I am told.
Did you know that taking the stairs rather than the escalator can change your life in the long run?
So I’ve heard.
Did you know it is not about how others live their lives but, rather, how you live your own?
So I’ve gathered.
Yet, here I stand, still caught relentlessly comparing my life to those of others.
I can’t win all the time.
I’ve spent a lot of time losing; losing to anger, self-loathing, the god-like power of the snooze button.
Losing to the strength of my excuses.
Losing to the ease by which I can say “maybe tomorrow.”
Losing to no one, nothing, but myself.
But sometimes, sometimes I can win.
I can win when I tap my pen against the paper if not just to know I tried to write today.
I can win by asking for forgiveness after losing myself so easily to undeserved anger.
I can win some small moments.
I choose the small things.
I called the elevator, paused, then chose to take the stairs today because I know a lifetime of stairs changes my life.
I shut my laptop, set a timer for 15-minutes, and huffed and puffed around in exercise because I knew it had the power to change my day.
I sat down to write even though I haven’t in a long time because I know it is the small, incremental victorious moments in my life that comprise the whole.
