On the self-guided life

A while ago, I realized that somewhere along the line, I'd lost track of my life. I was coasting, doing what other people thought I should do, letting other people make my decisions. It was easy--but it landed me where I didn't want to be, and left me in a position where I could be left behind, or I could overstay my welcome.

Neither was a good option, so I decided, then and there, that I needed to find Other Ways.

Since then, I've been working on getting my life back in my own hands, and I've been reading up--I didn't know, when this started, that there was a whole community of people who are trying to make their lives the way they want them to be, and that I could possibly be one of those wonderful, radiant people.

So I'm making the food I want to eat.
I'm cleaning up my body and my dependence on unhealthy products.
I'm looking for ways to get back on my own two feet and into the sort of situations I want to be in, and to minimize the ones I wind up in because I'm not paying attention.

It's hard. But it's also hard being passive, being pushed around by whatever someone else's life throws at me.

The learning curve is sharp, and sometimes I just want to slide right back down it and just be easy, but I was so unhappy and I didn't even realize how bad it was.

So every day, I have to choose to be self-guided, to listen to myself and to what I want to do, to be happy the way I'm happy, not how someone else is. I want to get married and have babies, but to do that, I have to be healthy and to know myself so I can be that open. I want to be a famous author, but to do that, I have to have a good writing habit and a working relationship with the muse that keeps generating ideas and flowing creativity. I want to be spiritual, but to do that I need to know what I believe in, now, today, not ages ago when I last worried about it.

And all of this is stuff that I'm in control of. No one else.