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halfabreath · 7 years

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for the august prompts: holsom and magic?

August Prompt Free For All, Prompt 7/21

Everyone knows about things. Not everyone has one, but everyone that does has a different word for it. Gifts. Abilities. Talents. Purpose. Superpowers. Quirks. Sometimes they’re useful but often times they aren’t. They range from perfect pitch to control over the weather to the ability to always grow perfectly ripe tomatoes.

Most things are small, but sometimes, in very rare circumstances, they’re all encompassing and terrifying. There’s a reason Ransom and Holster call them curses.

No one knows quite how long Holster’s been alive. He was born in 1991 but he’s been living far longer than the time that’s passed between then and now, simply because time doesn’t always work for Holster. That’s how he’d described it to Ransom their freshman year.

“It’s like, I dunno.” He’d slurred, sprawled over Ransom’s lap with a beer in one hand and the material of Ransom’s sweatshirt crumpled in the other. “It slows down for me. Once, in high school, I was in a study hall that lasted like two and a half days.”

“How’d you know?” Ransom asked, combing his fingers through Holster’s hair. He always liked to brush his fingers through the soft strands when he was drunk.

Holster shrugged, shoulder digging into Ransom’s stomach. “Fell asleep twice and I smelled like, super bad at the end of it. ‘Sides, I can tell. I know how time is supposed to feel.” Ransom just nods and plucks the beer from between Holster’s loose fingers, taking a long drink before handing it back.

“Can you do it now?” Ransom asks, and Holster nods before curling a little closer to him, eyes squeezed shut. The music they’re listening to drops octaves as the sound waves are forced to stretch and the people around them begin moving in slow motion. Ransom looks around the party, amazed, and holds Holster tight.

“Time doesn’t work for me, either.” He’d whispered into his friend’s hair. He didn’t admit it to many people; the topic was so mangled by anxiety and fear it was difficult to articulate. Ransom was only able to say it then because the alcohol made him bold and Holster’s warm weight made him strong. Holster opened his eyes and looked up at Ransom in confusion, then turned when the music warbled from the low, distended tones to a sped up, high pitched melody. The partygoers moved so fast they blurred, and in seconds the Haus emptied as Ransom sped through the end of the party. When they found an equilibrium the music had stopped and the Haus was dark, party detritus scattered over the floor.

Holster tipped the last of the beer down his throat and set the can to the side before wrestling Ransom down until they were both laying together, limbs tangled and breathing synced. “Fuck curses,” He said, and ducked his head to slot their lips together. They made out, off and on, until they fell asleep, and when they woke up the next morning it was with hangovers and their arms still wrapped around each other.

They didn’t talk about the kiss, but they did talk about everything else: gifts and curses and how fucking annoying clocks are and then - then they made The Plan. Ransom would speed things up whenever Holster slowed them down, and they’d make it out of college in exactly four years - no more, no less.

No one knows how much time Ransom has left.

Time applied to Ransom until he was seventeen years old. At 9:37:14 on October 15, 2011, when Ransom - then Justin - was taking his first standardized exam for entry into american colleges. he was given sixty minutes to complete the math portion of the exam; he swears it passed in forty five seconds. By the time he’d finished the first problem the time had been up, and when he’d told his parents about it they’d assumed he’d panicked.

Ransom had not panicked. He spent forty five seconds on one problem and had been forced to hand in the test with only one answer bubble filled. After that test, though - that’s when Ransom began to panic. No matter how long he studied or how well he knew the material, time sped up whenever he sat down with the test in front of him. He knows it’s not just anxiety. Time changes, not Ransom’s perception of it.

It’s only after the same thing begins to happen on a nearly weekly basis, whenever he has an assignment due for school, that his parents take him to see a specialist. Three weeks later, after a series of grueling tests, he has an answer: he definitely has test anxiety, and he definitely has a thing.

“Think of it like another challenge,” His father said. “Another obstacle you’ll overcome.” Justin wanted to believe him, but it was difficult taking advice from someone who’s thing was controlling the growth of mint in his herb garden. His mother, with her eidetic memory, wasn’t much help, either.

Holster’s the only one who knows exactly when gifts become curses. There are gray hairs in his playoff beard and sometimes, at night, he’ll whisper his fears into the dark (what if I’ve lived too long already and drop dead of old age tomorrow, did I spend too much time on the bad things and go too fast during the good times, why can’t I control it, do you ever wonder what it’s like to not be like this) and Ransom will reach down and offer his hand. Holster always takes it, and Ransom always lets him slow down time for as long as he needs to be comforted. They’ve weathered long nights together, seconds stretched into minutes into hours, hands joined halfway between their bunks.

Once, in juniors, Holster has played in a game that lasted a week. Others had been longer. He tells people he lived in Iowa for two years, but when he thinks back to the nights that stretched on and on, the road trips that took months, the practices and drills and the dragging realization that he wouldn’t be drafted –

Holster knows he spent much longer than two years in Iowa.

During that same time, Ransom’s junior and senior years of high school blurred together. He’d tried to calculate all the lost seconds once, adding up memory after memory, but he’d given up halfway through. It had been devastating to watch the minutes slip into days and weeks of time he’d never get back. How much development had he lost? What knowledge had he missed? Would his time at Samwell feel the same way years after he graduates?

Ransom can’t stand the thought of losing a single second at Samwell.

They throw a kegster without Ransom once, and only once. Ransom’s in Boston at a conference and Holster doesn’t know how to balance time without him. He hadn’t been particularly good at it before, but now, without Ransom constantly speeding things back up, things get out of control.

The kegster lasts fifteen hours and Holster’s not the only one affected. Everyone in his immediate area - and there are a lot of people in his immediate area that night - slows down. The doors open at 10pm and they drink and dance for hours and when someone checks the time after the sixth game of pong they realize it’s only 11:30. They finish Ransom’s carefully curated party playlist - all 215 songs of it - and have to start it again. They actually run out of tub juice, too, and the alcohol doesn’t metabolize as fast as it should so everyone who attends is hungover for days after. When Ransom returns on Sunday night they still haven’t cleaned the Haus and Holster’s been asleep for almost two full days, exhausted from the effort.

They don’t have a party without Ransom again.

Senior year, Ransom doesn’t hold up his end of the bargain. It starts small: brunches that take up half the day, late nights on the couch, sunsets in the reading room stretching on and on, the sky still bathed in brilliant color long after the sun should have set.

They’d promised they’d be in and out of college in exactly four years, but now that the time’s almost up Ransom can’t stomach leaving. Holster will slow things down without even noticing, powerful as he is, but Ransom’s always painfully aware of when his thing kicks in and eventually he just…stops.

He feels bad - Bitty’s having a hard semester and Whiskey is spending more time with the lacrosse team than with them - but every time he looks at the clock and sees that they’re another minute closer to graduating he panics. By the time November rolls around he’s only actively speeding up their games. Holster doesn’t seem to notice.

He doesn’t bat an eye when they somehow have the time to watch Miracle on Ice, Goon, and Breakfast at Scott’s on a weeknight. He’s nonplussed when a post-kegster clean up and deets swap takes three hours instead of one. He accepts longer intermissions between periods easily. He doesn’t question why the bus ride back from Boston College that takes much longer than usual, and he doesn’t say anything when Ransom curls up in the seat next to him and rests his head on his shoulder. He’s silent when Ransom crawls into his bed instead of dropping a hand off the side of his bunk until he whispers what if it’s not a curse after all into their shared pillow.

Holster doesn’t say a word when Ransom tilts forward and kisses him but he does cup his face with trembling hands to pull him close, kissing him again and again until their lips are sensitive and swollen. It’s an endless night, but not a cursed one.

#noel writes #august pffa #holsom fic #omgcp fanfic #adam holster birkholtz #justin ransom oluransi #magical realism i guess #holsom af #check please!#anyway i hope this makes sense

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lewepstein · 7 years

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Close Encounters With the Truth

I was recently listening to a recording of Anthony de Mello, an inspirational Jesuit priest and psychotherapist when something he said stopped me in my tracks. The story that he told seemed to go to the heart of what it means to be honest with ourselves. It also spoke to what has gone terribly wrong in our society regarding what we call The Truth, a problem that seems to have reached some kind of critical mass in the era of Trump.

De Mello describes a lecture that he was giving to a group of fellow Jesuits regarding certain tribal cultures. The central idea had to do with how innocent and good these people were before ever having read the gospel or known anything of Christianity. Following the presentation, he was approached by an elderly Catholic missionary who had devoted the last forty years of his life to working with the very tribes de Mello had been speaking about. The question that this clergyman posed struck me as remarkable for its courage and its candor. He said the following:

“ I’ve been reflecting on what you spoke about today and wonder if I haven’t spoiled these people by introducing Christianity into lives that already possess innocence and goodness.”

One thing that I take away from this story has to do with the willingness of an individual to consider a view of the world contrary to what he had always believed to be true - to allow doubt to cast a shadow on something he once thought of as God’s work. Regardless of what we may personally believe or feel about the work of missionaries, we can still marvel at the strength and faith that this priest displayed. When confronted with evidence challenging the value of what had been his life’s work, he was willing to question whether his efforts had been of any value at all.

I can’t say whether or not the truth will always set us free or even that we’ll feel better having faced a truth. What I can say from my experience as a family member and from what I’ve learned from my work with families is that our life-long relationship with the truth is possibly the most important connection that we will ever have.

Sometimes I find myself asking clients faced with an important life decision, “In your heart of hearts what do you believe to be true?” Often, the underlying questions I am asking are: “How well do you really know yourself?” and, ”Do you honestly feel that you can live with this situation or relationship in your life without it eroding your sense of self?”

Polonius’s final words of advice to Hamlet in Shakespeare’s most performed play is: “Above all else to thine own self be true.” The wisdom that he offers Hamlet beyond the virtue of being honest with himself has to do with being courageous in the face of difficult realities. I take this to mean that we place ourselves in jeopardy when we ignore or deny what we underlyingly know to be true. The reason that we avoid exploring things more deeply is usually because they frighten us or take us out of our zone of comfort.

Close encounters with the truth can also arise in our jobs and careers. One run-in that I had with the truth had to do with my work as a family therapist. With the benefit of hindsight I can say that in the 1990s I had “fallen in love” with an approach to treatment called family systems therapy and the theories of Murray Bowen. This approach had been very helpful to me in my work on my own family issues and some clients of mine reported growth in other parts of their lives after having examined and established more mature relationships with extended family members.

The danger I fell prey to was believing that the theory should work in all cases even when some of my experiences with clients didn’t support that conclusion. I was finding that there were clients of mine with more severe symptoms - usually eating disorders and post- trauma problems - who seemed to derive little benefit from this type of treatment. It was emotionally difficult for me to let go of my belief in the universality of this approach. But I would have eventually faced my own crisis of honesty and integrity had I continued to apply a method that was contradicted by the evidence that I was witnessing in my daily work.

“The Fog of War,” a 2003 documentary memoir of Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara was a film that left me with a deep respect for truth telling as confessional - a public figure’s way of making amends for policies that wreaked death and destruction on entire populations. McNamara was a figure reviled by the American Left in the 1960’s, one of the architects of the Vietnam War and a Pentagon number cruncher who always came across to me as devoid of feelings and humanity. But watching this frail eighty-five year old bare his soul and humbly admit to the miscalculations and moral failures of himself and others during that era was a lesson in humility. I felt like I was witnessing a different kind of power in his willingness to tell the truth. And this in turn left me with a begrudging respect for a man whom I had once held in contempt.

It is important that we bring truth to bear in our careers and in examining the regrets we may carry around past decisions that we have made, but it is our intimate relationships that challenge us to face the most difficult truths about ourselves and others. As a couples’ counselor I have found that almost all marital problems are crises of honesty in one form or another. Resentments build when people ignore or deny the sincere criticisms and requests their partners offer them. Our narcissism becomes the enemy of the truth when we are unwilling to take a closer look at the negative and sometimes even destructive aspects of ourselves.

Another reason that we are susceptible to lying to ourselves and distorting the truth is because of our early need to be cared for and to trust our caregivers. This leaves us forever vulnerable to the self-deception of being seduced. Life partners, friends and relatives can become surrogate and symbolic caregivers who can abuse their positions of power and exploit the powers that we hand over to them. This kind of adulation can extend to gurus and politicians who we deeply want to believe in.

I have sat in my office with emotionally and even physically battered women who have defended the husbands who abused them daily. They would insist that, “ Underneath his hurtful behaviors I know that he really loves me.” When I have inquired further about any evidence they might have to support that belief they generally have had little to offer. When we create mythologies around other human beings and brainwash ourselves into believing that they are OK when they are not, we do so at our own risk. We also harm the other person whose distorted ideas and behaviors remain unchallenged.

The denial of reality that I have witnessed in women who defend their abusive partners is part of what we are witnessing in the election of and continued support by large segments of our population for Donald Trump. The idea that underneath his crass bombast he is really a good guy who is looking out for us, the common people, is almost identical to the myths that women create about their abusive partners. The fact that Trump is himself a chronic liar is compelling in itself, but the daily reports of his breaking major campaign promises is something that few can deny. And yet that denial of reality is exactly what is happening with his political base. The cruel irony of the Trump phenomenon is that the people who saw him as the authentic, straight-talking, non-politician who would “drain the Washington swamp” and fight for the little guy now have significant evidence to prove that they were betrayed once again.

Trump’s assault on the truth is part of an epic, global battle that will probably determine the direction of the entire world. The Russia connection and Putin’s placing his thumb on the American electoral process by hacking into computers and planting fake news on the internet is designed to create confusion and undermine our democratic institutions, raising the question, “is there anything that we can believe in or trust? On-going investigations will soon determine whether there was collusion between Putin and Trump’s election campaign that could have tilted the election in Trump's favor. Many people are left with the question: Who do we believe? - the press and investigative agencies or a leader and his own media entourage who daily attack mainstream journalists and declare that what they are exposing is “fake news?”

The Trump regime certainly seems to have an Orwellian character built on distortion and lies. In the dystopian novel 1984, Big Brother’s credo for the masses is, “War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery and Ignorance is Strength.” In this absolutist, totalitarian state the “Department of Justice” is the agency of torture and mind control. But is this “new-think” much different from the Environmental Protection Agency in the era of Trump which is headed by the very man who sued it multiple times in the past, is rapidly dismantling regulations on the chemical and oil industries, and is being “advised” by the lawyers of the corporations that it is charged with regulating? Is this all part of what activist Naomi Klein has called the “Shock Doctrine?” - a flipping of reality on its head and sowing confusion about what is real? - a further softening us up as a prelude to our acceptance of the authority, protection and wisdom of the Great Leader?

Much is at stake in the willingness of people to be open enough to re-examine what they hold to be true. What is in jeopardy has to do with some people’s very survival - the coverage they receive in our American healthcare system and the environmental fate of our planet. The direction we move in as a nation may be based in large part on the willingness of a portion of our society to take an honest look at the political package they were sold and to consider fighting back against the beginnings of tyranny. Or, on the other hand, will people double down on what they'd rather believe to be the truth out of some misplaced loyalty and shame, without ever considering the facts or other possibilities?

If we connect the dots, we can begin to draw a line between the Jesuit priest who was listening to the DeMelo lecture, Defense Secretary McNamara’s early look backs at his role during the Vietnam War, the person in a relationship who knows that she is not being treated in the way that she deserves and the citizen in a democracy who is confronted with critical political choices that challenge his ingrained prejudices and group loyalties. What each is being called upon to struggle with is his relationship with the truth. This is the part of our humanity that may be even deeper than the influences of social class, gender, race and culture. It has to do with the qualities we all need to cultivate in order to get things right in our personal lives and in our society - curiosity, honesty, courage and the willingness to be open to new ideas. They are the parts of our humanity that may unsettle us, but may also bring on the necessary internal shake-ups that challenge our narrow, tribal beliefs. Hopefully, they will keep us on a never ending quest for what is true.

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mollyalicia3 · 5 years

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5 Questions That You Need to Ask Yourself, as a Small Business Owner

The most successful business owners see themselves as lifetime learners. They live in a mode of asking questions, listening to people, including family, friends, employees, industry peers, management experts, mentors and others with valuable knowledge and ideas to offer. Here are some essential questions that every small business owner should ask, to check yourself for blind spots in your way of thinking about your business and your future plans for it. When you can answer these well, you’ll feel more sure of the track you’re on with your business and your strategic plans for its future and yours.

1. What Don’t I Know? How much do you know about what you need to do to succeed? You’ll need to ask yourself some pretty big questions to figure that out. What am I missing in my self-education, or in my formal education about doing business? About my industry? About business finance management? About strategic planning? What more do I need to know about my competition? My suppliers? My target market? For most newer business owners, these kinds of questions can have many answers. There’s certainly a lot to know, and you probably still have quite a bit of it left to learn. Start with the essentials. Read industry magazines, especially small business growth success stories. Join an industry peer group. Join your local chamber of commerce, business persons organization, civic group, local recreational sports league, etc.. Read service business management books and articles. Watch YouTube videos on entrepreneurial risk-taking, small business financial planning, business technology advancements, industry-specific product innovations and other relevant topics. Discuss business with trusted, knowledgeable family members, friends, vendors and local entrepreneurs. Talk to your local SBA representative about any and everything you care to learn about local resources for lending, business learning and networking. Ask clients about your services and what they recommend for further optimizing them?

2. How Big Should I Think? Different entrepreneurs think on different scales. Vision varies by personal perspectives on what constitutes a good life. Many entrepreneurs set staggering goals for themselves and their businesses. Daring to dream such dreams is daunting, and perhaps even excessive-seeming to those with less amped-up ambitions. Scaling a service business indeed starts with the size of the ultimate goal. Around the country, there are many satisfied, happy portable restroom business owners, loving their lives, running a few trucks and a couple of hundred rental units. Their lives are rich. They know what they want. Others have tunnel-vision on building major regional companies. Many have achieved that and aspire to continue growing. Others have become national mega-providers, employing hundreds of administrative and support employees and dispatching thousands of local service contractors coast-to-coast. Ask yourself a few key questions, to determine on what heading you want to put your business in terms of growth. Ask yourself, “Is the scope of my long-business plan appropriate to realize a level of success that is commensurate with my abilities and my company’s full potential for market share?” The answer could include assessment of short- and long-term market indicators that you should be aware of, projected future inventory costs, shifting employment market factors, diversification options for adding revenue channels, broader economic factors, financing costs, and other key considerations in long-term strategic growth planning. Ask yourself if you’re taking the proper steps to ensure that your early operational and financial positioning are sound, for purposes of enabling and guiding the extent of long-term growth you envision. Get help. Seek consultation about the necessary tech development and growth financing. As your first order of tasks in pursuit of growth, conduct an analyses of the industrial and business consumer markets for your industry in the area you’re targeting for expansion. Additionally, complete a competitive market analyses of those areas. Remember to include in your deliberations a healthy amount of mulling over what you really want out of your life. For you, is it all about living a charming, simple, quiet life doing the work you enjoy? Or, do you want an epic adventure, striving to meet the challenges of growing a business into a regional, or even a national player.

3. Can My Business Run Itself? Can your business can run without you for a day? A week? Two weeks? Ask, “What people and standardized processes and policies do I need to put in place, to ensure that my business operations will be uninterrupted and profitable, if I’m away due to illness, family obligation, vacation, etc.? You need to position your portable restroom field staff and administrative office team to operate independently of you, whether you plan to take a family vacation, or to visit new markets, as part of your methodical take-over of the lower forty eight states with your business growth strategy. So, is your staff ready to fly on their own? Of course, like so many great business questions, this one opens up a vast array of other inquiries. Are your employees dependable to show up? Are they clear on established processes? Can they field issues and provide solutions? Do they know when to contact you for decisions or larger problem resolutions? Do they understand the big picture of the business’s goals well enough to manage their tasks in ways that guide operations in the general direction toward those goals? The first time you find that you really need or want to leave your staff on their own, you become acutely aware of the importance of having already prepared them for the challenge. Provide thorough training along the way, as a high priority. Spend a bit of time every day in brief instructive coaching moments with all, or as many employees as possible. Every week, conduct short group training meetings. Every month, present policy and procedures training. Every year, provide staff and systems reviews, and set improvement objectives. Business team success requires a system of training, to develop the best possible support around you. Systematic training maximally multiplies your efforts, to ensures that the strongest possible progress continues, uninterrupted, in your absence.

4. Do I Face Down Tough Decisions or Avoid Them? Entrepreneurs are confronted by myriad daily decisions and many larger, longer-term ones that can add up to overwhelm the average risk-averse individual. So, it’s important to recognize that some hesitance to incur the kinds of risks that are inherent in business decisions, large and small, is natural. The resolve to stare down risks, make challenging decisions and move forward, despite fear of being wrong, is leadership courage. That particular form of courage is the foundational requirement for business management success. Adopt a simple approach to making business decisions. When faced with major decisions, there are some essential considerations to weigh. Check yourself to ensure that you’re following a winning decision-making formula. Especially, weigh the pros and cons, to ensure that any short-term gains for which you’re trading off long-term benefits are really worth it. (Hint: In business, they’re usually not.) Further, cure yourself of the dreaded “paralysis by analysis” syndrome, if you happen to have that. If you find yourself taking excessive lengths of time to make decisions, or stalling out and not making them at all, seek input from trusted friends, relatives, industry peers in other regions, experts, etc.. Let others provide a sounding board for your deliberations, and get some free advice from them to add to your helpful considerations.

5. Am I Making Sense of Work / Life Balance? Are you burning the candle at both ends, per the old cliché about workaholics? People who do that sometimes achieve spectacular things in business for a while, and they’re confident that they’ll never run down. But, then they burn out a little. Confidence falters, and they may become increasingly uncertain about their aspirations and abilities. Business ownership tends not to be a hospitable place for those who lunge at their objectives like indefatigable human business management machines. All too often people who throw themselves at their goals with such unrestrained force find themselves, at some point, doing what they would have sworn was impossible for them—feeling fatigued and even burned out. So, by any means, measure your routine. Come up for air frequently. Listen to your spouse and friends when they say you need time off. You need some evening and/or weekend periods of relaxation and recreation, and yes, you do actually need the occasional vacation. Running oneself into the ground is a rookie mistake made by some unproven corporate middle managers struggling to demonstrate to the boss their incomparable commitment and super-human energy. Since you are the boss, it’s up to you to live well the life you’ve chosen for yourself and your family. That refers to a balanced, maturely measured way of being an independent business owner. Notwithstanding the need for spending time with family and friends, to help you maintain some healthy balance and perspective on what it is that you’re working for in the first place, it’s true that many entrepreneurs are of the type who simply enjoy running their businesses more than doing any kind of personal activity. No problem. Doing what you love is the whole point. Balance, however, is about being able to recognize when it’s time to shift over to enjoying other things temporarily. Preserve the sense of joy you feel in your work, by not over-exploiting it until one day you find that it feels more like drudgery that you want to escape, than the exhilarating adventure it once was for you. For people whose work is their favorite thing to do, spending time relaxing and doing something different than work invariably makes getting back into the office even more satisfying.

Take-Away There’s an easy business case for conducting the kind of self-examination suggested in the question series above. Use this simple set of inquiries to evaluate your current positioning and its liklihood of leading to achievement of your goals. Create a professional development plan for yourself. Give yourself some developmental tasks to accomplish daily, weekly, monthly and yearly, to help you advance your essential business management skills, and knowledge of your field and your market. Forge your path to optimal business success and happiness by committing to life-long learning, self-examination, training your team and balancing your personal and professional life.

http://www.americanliquidwaste.com/2019/03/business-trends/5-questions-that-you-need-to-ask-yourself-as-a-small-business-owner/

from Septic Tank Pumping Pros https://septictankpumpingpros.wordpress.com/2019/03/12/5-questions-that-you-need-to-ask-yourself-as-a-small-business-owner/

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sarahburness · 5 years

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What Expecting to Die Young Taught Me About Living a Happy Life

“I’ve come to trust not that events will always unfold exactly as I want, but that I will be fine either way. The challenges we face in life are always lessons that serve our soul’s growth.” ~ Marianne Williamson

At the age of nine, I was sitting in a doctor’s office at Baylor University with both of my parents when we were all told I wouldn’t live to see twenty-three. The doctor casually told us my dad would probably never get to walk me down the aisle and I’d likely never make my mom a grandmother, but there was great chicken pot pie in the cafeteria on the first floor.

Enjoy the rest of your day.

Eight months later, on my tenth birthday, the possibility of my dad walking me down the aisle was permanently taken away when he died suddenly of an aortic and thoracic aneurysm. He had the same genetic abnormality I have, which caused the aneurysm, so by my logic, confirmed by the doctors, my demise was not far behind.

I had no idea the day I turned ten, the day I lost my dad, my misguided and broken heart gifted me a license to be entitled and reckless until the day I died. Which, according to the medical community, wasn’t that far away.

Let me back the medical drama bus up back to the day in Texas at the hospital just for a quick, minor detail to note.

That day my dad and I were simultaneously diagnosed with a genetic disorder called Marfan Syndrome.

In a very tiny nutshell, it’s a connective tissue disorder found on the fibrillin one gene. It essentially weakens all connective tissue in the body. The result is a body whose heart, lungs, eyes, and spine are severely impacted. A prominent and common feature with this condition is “abnormal” height. People affected are relatively tall (I’m 6’2”, my dad was 6’9”).

For precautionary purposes, we both stopped participating in any activities that raise the heartbeat, to decrease the risk of having an aneurysm or potentially causing damage to the face due to dislocation of the lens in the eye.

No contact sports, no exercising, no gym at school. I was basically told I could walk, bowl, or golf. I hated sports anyway, so I was excited to not have to dress for gym.

This consequently led to a lifetime of comments like “You don’t play basketball or volleyball?! That’s a shame!” or “Omg, you’re so tall!” As if I wasn’t already painfully aware, but I digress…

Point being, I was told from a very young age on a fairly regular basis, “You can’t.” So I learned to habitually answer, “I can’t” every time someone asked me to do pretty much anything.

What possible negative effects could this have?

I couldn’t see it at the time, but this led to a lifetime of constantly assessing every situation based on whether it was going to speed up my untimely death or not.

I didn’t learn how to question whether or not I liked things but whether or not it was something that was going to kill me sooner or later. In turn, I missed a million opportunities to get to know who I was as a young woman.

All I knew and all I was told were all the things I couldn’t do all the time.

This short-term life span turned my life into a short-term life plan. Soon enough the emotional pains of being a teenager and the new kid in high school, along with unresolved daddy issues, kicked into high gear, and I had no idea how to deal with any of it.

So, I drank. A lot.

The rest of high school and most of college was a blur. I got married at twenty-three because, well, time was running out for me. And then, when I was twenty-four, doctors told me my life expectancy had suddenly increased to forty.

(If there’s one emoji to express how I felt it would be the face with the wide eyes and red cheeks that looks like he would say “Oh sh*t!” if he could talk.)

I panicked and started trying to speed up the clock. Living wasn’t for me. I wasn’t raised to live; I was raised to die. Live all the places, have a baby, buy the stuff, laugh all the laughs, and then die.

This is where my excessive drinking turned into full-blown alcoholism and prescription drug addiction.

I was either going to OD or make my heart explode, but I wasn’t going to stick around. I must note that none of this was planned, intentional, or a suicide mission. In my mind at the time, I literally didn’t know what else to do, not even how to ask for help.

So, someone asked for help for me. Rehab is a whole other blog.

I’m thirty-nine now, well past my expiration date, and still learning how to live life today. In my drinking days, life revolved around morbid reflection. In early sobriety, life revolved around morbid projection. Today life revolves around just this day. This hour. This moment.

When one of my coaches asks me to journal about how I want my life to look in five years or where I want my business to be long term, I still don’t know how to answer that.

I don’t understand long term. And for the longest time, I always thought that to be a nightmarish curse. Until now.

My inability to see life long-term seems to be all the rage these days. There’s Eckhart Tolle, Wayne Dyer, and Deepak Chopra all preaching about being present, being here now, and being there with the spirit of love, and I’m over here wondering how long the two-week wait to hear if this gets published is going to feel or if I’ll be around to see it go live.

When you think about it, we’re all terminal. No one gets out of here alive. Yet we all run around like we’re going to cheat death—ironically, with this weird impending sense of doom.

We run out of joy staying married to jobs, people, and places we are no longer passionate about. We’ve forgotten how to be happy because we’ve made it so elusive.

It only feels elusive because we’ve spent our time wrong. We’ve spent our time focusing on how we can create a living for ourselves instead of how to create a life for our hearts, and the only way to do that is to get to know yourself first.

In designing my life by listening to my heart, I discovered a few things along the way.

I learned that we habitually state we are human beings, but we spend too much time doing. We get stuck in the how and what next instead of being right where our feet are in that moment. I learned to create space and presence for life to happen organically instead of allowing my mind to race with perceived fears.

Living in each moment used to mean living as recklessly as possible and constantly challenging the odds just to see if I would make it. Today, living in each moment means being driven by what my heart is calling me to do.

I’ve learned to take the time to figure out what the voice of my heart sounds like instead of the blazing of doubt in my mind. This finally allowed me to see what felt light and right in my life and allowed everything that feels heavy to fall to the way side.

Heart driven. Soul led.

This journey was started by a seed that was planted three decades ago. The seed called “I can’t” grew into a self-fulfilling prophecy filled with destruction, heartbreak, sorrow, and the urge to run from everything.

When I stopped running (drinking, using, blaming, complaining) and learned to be still with myself and all that had encompassed my life, an entirely new life was born.

In designing my life and healing my soul, I have found that happiness can be found in big moments like reuniting with my soulmate, winning a competition, or leaping into a new career. It can also be found in the smaller moments like watching my child choose a book instead of watching television, receiving flowers just because, or just being grateful for the sunshine.

But I have found I am the happiest and most content when I am meditating, creating a safe space for others, and playing. Playing like a child on a daily basis is where it’s at. Whether I’m writing, coaching, baking, or gluing rhinestones on anything I can get my hands on, that’s where I’m at complete peace.

And that (happiness) seems to be the individual goal of most people I meet, but it doesn’t seem to translate into the collective thinking. That’s where I’ve found the hiccup. The getting tied up in what we see everyone else doing, where everyone else is succeeding, and then wondering why we don’t have a that perfect slice of peace pie that everyone else seems to have.

The hardest thing I’ve learned is there is no special sauce, no magical happiness-to-sadness ratio, and no one-size-fits-all solution. We each have to define happiness for ourselves.

For me, this means doing the work. It looks like me getting brutally honest with my past, mending my mistakes, giving love to every person I meet, and telling those who are close to me what’s really going on every day.

This connects me to you and you to me, and this is ultimately the biggest lesson I learned.

We all want to be seen. We all want to be heard. We all want permission to be ourselves. I’ve experienced what that feels like, and now I’m living a life that I was told would never happen. I stopped believing other people’s opinions of me, my life, and where they think it should be when I realized those opinions and thoughts are about what’s missing from their life, not mine.

There is no slice of peace pie waiting for you or for me. We each have our own pie to flavor, bake, and share. I guess that would be called Purpose Pie. I sit in gratitude every day I have found my pie and am able to share with all who are hungry.

All of this because they told me I was going to die and the hospital chicken pot pie was nice.

About Lindsay Wilson

Lindsay is a life and mentor coach walking clients through emotional recovery and into self-discovery from significant emotional events including death of a parent, rape, addiction, medical challenges, infertility, and divorce. Lindsay is a single mother to an eight-year-old superhero in Nashville, TN and is on a mission to get rid of the phrase “good enough.” Visit her at lindsaywilsoncoaching.com.

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