When we were children, we were told that we could DO anything, BE anything we wanted to be when we grew up. It seemed so simple. So hopeful and achievable.
anything we wanted to be.
and my mind reverts back to that poster in Kathy Hunt’s dance studio where I went weekly for ten years…”if you can dream it you can achieve it”…of course back then, it was just to get to wear toe shoes and not to be the chubby girl doing jazz hands in the back row.
Fast forward forty years. I’m the girl who took the grownups seriously. Whatever I wanted. No one told me I had to choose…so I’ve done it all. It doesn’t seem to be very stable, and make much sense to be sniffing 40 years old and still wondering what I’m going to be when I grow up.
And on the surface, perhaps it doesn’t seem very smart. Here I am. Approaching middle age…with not a damned thing to show for it. No 401K. No insurance. No family or children…but.
But.
It’s ok.
Because there is something on the horizon. There’s something bubbling under my surface…and it’s going to be the thing where we all go…DUH!!! Why haven’t you been doing that all along?
But the thing is…I couldn’t have done it all along. Because I needed to do all the other stuff, in order to be good at the thing.
and I’m ok with that.
I bought some new shoes tonight. Walking/Running shoes. Chris and I went and got properly fitted for shoes, then we came home and discussed it. Talked about life. I threw together a really great and simple meal, and we sat in the living room and had an evening brainstorming about the places we’ll go.
When we walked into the house tonight he said, “buyers remorse?”
I said, “no way. what about you?”
He said, “nope. but the thing is…now we can never go back to crappy shoes. There’s no turning back”
And as I look at my new shoes, sitting in the middle of the floor where I properly took them off, and I’m thinking about THINKING. And about being OPEN and making a list of the things I require out of this thing that’s bubbling up…I think about his words.
There’s no turning back now.
and I imagine where those shoes are going to take me.
and I cannot possibly wait. 
Misti Ridiculous 
It’s true, there’s no going back. Only going forward. Forward into something AWESOME.
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Earlier this year, I came across this quote by Paul Rand and I think about it a lot.
“The public is more familiar with bad design than good design. It is, in effect, conditioned to prefer bad design, because that is what it lives with. The new becomes threatening, the old reassuring.”
I like that quote because I think it’s about our lives, and how we live them. We do the same boring stuff because it’s familiar, reassuring. We don’t do new things because it’s scary. And when you want to do something that not many people you know have done, you’re likely to get a laundry list of their fears for what you are doing. It reinforces the idea that new things are scary, and you should seek out the safe, familiar path. Because, what if it doesn’t work out?
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I’m coming home full of new ideas. And I don’t care if doesn’t work out, because I haven’t felt this focused in a long time. Let’s do this!
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You’ve got you. And, frankly, I’m happy to read a blog that isn’t child centered and I love the small fry.
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