How do you feel?
What's your condition?
You are alive but are you living?

It’s been a hot minute, I know and I’m sorry.

a little bit of introspection brought to you by too much time in my head…

There is no passion to be found in playing small - in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.

-Nelson Mandela

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again…who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly“

-Brené Brown

They say laughter is the best medicine and if there is anything I’ve learned in the past about taking the blows life dishes out is that there are a few ways to react. I was defeated and sad, but I laughed because thats all I could do. Laugh at the fact that it was my luck to have my debit card info stolen, all my bills clear at once, and my fridge break all in the same day. I laughed because I knew that after all that crying I was going to wake up tomorrow and get the opportunity to fumble through a new day. I get the opportunity to take this messy, crazy, stressful life and make it something positive. Something to laugh and smile about.

So, in the last few weeks of being alone, I’ve realized it’s something to get used to. I wont always feel so stupidly uncomfortable in my own presence, and I do believe I will grow to love it. In the words of a beautiful friend of mine, growth is uncomfortable.

If I’m this uncomfortable now, I must be growing.

So if I'm being honest, I am really not being honest with myself. I probably haven't been for the better part of the last two years. I have been unhappy and my mantra has become "such is life." I used to say that when things went wrong but I knew things would be okay, and it swiftly became the negative way I described my inability to enjoy the things I once used to. 

Whenever you move somewhere new, whether you've been there a million times or not, there is the inevitable adjustment period. The time in which your brain does crazy things trying to get used to where you are and shed the feeling of where you were before.

Mare was in a silent stone prison, but even she broke free. 

They say “don’t quit your daydream”
But what if your day dream is what is holding you back? What if staying in the clouds and not planting your feet on the ground is what has caused the stagnation felt so deeply inside?

Time for a daydream comedown.

The whole entire world around me is moving forward, why cant I? 

I've got a case of writing amnesia.

It’s funny because so many people, over the last year of not knowing who stands before me in the fingerprint painted mirror built into my bathroom door, tell me to just write through the rut. But how can you write through something when you don’t have a voice and when words don’t even look like words anymore. When the very things that made Kierstin, a writer, have become foreign objects in my hands.  

They say the pen is mightier than the sword. I call fallacy because when I hold the pen I don’t feel mighty. Hell, I don’t feel at all. 

Sometimes I feel like I'm failing, and then it hits me, I haven't failed.
I'm just getting started. 

Grief is like walking through a dark room you've been in before but it's all different. It's confusing, unfamiliar, jutting out in different directions at unexpected times. In unexpected ways. I'm not sure how long I'll stay in the dark. Could be days, weeks, months. But I know that somewhere in the dark is the key to turning on the light. You always told me I am the key to my own success. So maybe the key to turning on the light will be found in the heart that's still healing from a loss so great.

Loss is strange. It's either all consuming or comes in agonizing waves of semi okay-ness

I am learning to slow down, take in the small intricacies of life, and love every minute.

It's a sadness that wanders in but no longer makes itself at home.

“You’ve always written for you, and the moment you stopped writing for you is the moment you stopped writing.” - a dear friend.

I want to want to do the dishes again.