Threshold

At the beginning of the summer, I had a goal. A self-improvement goal (although aren’t all goals about self-improvement?), and I knew it would be hard for me. So I thought I’d head off my usual inability to achieve written goals (sorry, Dad) and I made myself accountable to someone else. We made charts and determined prizes and promised to check up on each other.

And I failed miserably.

This failure seemed to just sit on top of a stack of other failed goals of the recent past and became much too overwhelming for me. It was too hard, and even though logically I knew that there was a way to move past this stack of failures, I was too tired to really try.

I am very good at hiding my feelings when they are bad and I am busy—my friend Cheryl once said that I show no emotion, I suppose because I like to deliver all lines with a straight face (lovely Mitton attribute, that one, and I won’t ever give it up)—and I’m quite confident that no one knew anything was wrong. Everyone continued knowing nothing until one Sunday evening while I chatted with a friend who picked up on my hesitation when I answered the usual “How’s your day?” And he reminded me that I’m not a failure and that I don’t have to tackle the stack all at once. But I do have to tackle the stack—in small, manageable ways.

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In March I began eating breakfast again, for the first time (consistently) since Jerusalem. The time before that was probably high school, although I’m sure I went through waves while living in the dorms. But it’s been four and a half months of steady breakfast eating, and that’s more time than I spent in Jerus. It’s constant now, and I like it.

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I discovered a blog this week that in all reality I should have come across earlier. But I don’t think I needed it earlier, I think I needed it now. I’m drawn to her writing and her personality and her honesty. And I sense so much deep truth in some of her ideas. Truth that I’ve taken and mulled over and let sit percolating in my mind.

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When you design your life in accordance to a complex grid, all the elements will align to create something more beautiful and unique than you ever could have come up with on your own. 

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I feel like I’m on the precipice of something great. The percolation, the breakfast, the small manageable decisions are leading me to an idea and way of living so real that I can’t fully understand or verbalize it. But it is good and true and powerful. It fits inside the grid. And I think it will make me more uniquely me.