Better Than it Was is Good Enough
The Baby Steps of Adulthood
Yesterday, a hail storm pounded my home region as I traversed I-79 through rain, sun, rain, and wet roads that make me wish giant mudflaps were mandatory. On my return, the clear two-lane roads that led me away from home were covered with decimated leaves, twigs, and general debris.
When I stopped by a friend’s house for a quick hello, those gathered there met me with two announcements. “We had hail,” the elder first informed me, explaining the condition of the road leading home. Also, the neighbor’s dog had eaten the entire 18-pack of fresh eggs I left on the porch on my way out earlier in the day.
Only then did I notice the debris of eggshells spread across the front lawn.
Common sense had told me the roads were covered with serious storm debris. And, common sense should have told me not to leave fresh farm eggs with the dog I had just loved on and sweet-talked as I walked from the car to the porch. That was my fault, not hers.
Around here, stormy weather and onery dogs are facts of life. Spring has sprung, after all, that time when the wild onions in the yard need mowing, but the lawn never dries out enough between rains to run the mower. I weed-eat enough to keep the water flows and drains around the house open, and declare it “better than it was.”
That’s my goal as of late, my standard lowered from the perfection and polish expected and insisted upon by the status quo. If I have improved something even slightly, “better than it was” is an accomplishment.
(Please note: My last few posts were NOT sent out via email, and the platform I use has AI now incorporated into their support. This recent glitch has been forwarded to real people, and I have googled it, but who knows if/when it will be remedied. So, you might want to catch up by visiting the site.)
The rain, sun, rain days are rainbow days, I remind myself. If I pay attention, and expand my perspective, somewhere a rainbow is likely.
Lately, I have had to push myself to open my life enough to catch the rainbows. I have been struggling to get myself out of my head long enough to allow the little highlights of life to bless and comfort me.
Better than it was is a long way from perfection, but it is still forward movement. Rain, sun, rain days are soggy and highly humid, but those are rainbow days.
I have long since given up striving for perfection, but not so long that I have given up beating myself up for my inability to achieve it. In fact, due to my current life condition (a seven-year, an emotion-processing period, my mid-life crisis, a significant career shift, and all the things touched upon in my archives…), my entire life is currently in chaos.
The rain, sun, rain days are rainbow days, I remind myself. If I pay attention, and expand my perspective, somewhere a rainbow is likely.
Better-than-it-was is about the only realistic goal I can set right now. Like the shaggy yard, my world has just been “too wet to mow.”
When I recently asked for trusted input and advice about the current condition of my personal life situation, I was told, “You have too many irons in the fire.”
Yeah. I tend to do that.
I also, when in life transitions, tend to play 52-pick-up with all the cards in my life. (52-card pickup is a prank that consists of the victim picking up a scattered deck of playing cards.) That’s my strategy for those life moments when I don’t know what to do next, what to focus on, where to direct my energies — toss it all up into the air, and see how it all lands.
(I’m a Gen X woman, the first generation of women told we could do/be anything we wanted. Instead of anything, many have been expected to handle everything. We had too many options, and too many expectations: Middle-class women who are now in their forties and fifties are exhausted, depressed, and feel like failures. But their despair isn’t about their waning physiques… Their angst is about something far greater.)
Unfortunately, this last transition has been a physical, mental, and spiritual toss-up. Oy. The triple whammy. If this is the high-level challenge along the path to enlightenment, I may be buried here and never make it to the next level.
This age, this phase, this moment in my life is about assessment. For the first time in years, I have been through every drawer, tub, and container in my walk-in closet, through all our camping gear, the office drawers, and supplies, and have touched and played with all the craft supplies and tools I have collected over the last decades.
(That last phase opened a creative rabbit hole I was immersed in for nearly a year. Watch my social media for original paintings going up for sale now that I’ve figured out shipping.)
So, I drug out all the detritus of our lives, and I haven’t sorted, organized, or put it all away again. I also started ripping out all the carpets in our house after a summer dealing with super-fleas. So, literally and physically, all our stuff out and then tossed up in the air.
In addition, the time now available for self-care and stillness allowed the anxiety, stress, and cultural trauma of the last several years to catch up with me. Dear friends lost, funerals missed, health scares, election frustrations, shifts in relationship dynamics, life dynamics, need and want dynamics. (Emotion work is extremely daunting work and so many never have the time, energy, or wherewithal to endure it. While others are forced into it and have no choice.)
So, physical toss-ups, a mental take down, and at my age, a good amount of spiritual struggle especially relating to faith. Faith and hope are intertwined, and who these days isn’t struggling with hope? So many of us are still trying to move forward with our feet tangled up in confusion about where we all — as a culture, nation, world, and planet — go from here.
Rain, sun, rain, sun.
“Better than it was,” is the adult version of baby steps. A clunky shuffle forward as we wait for election results, medical test results, family-dynamic shifts, economic recovery, the end of inflation, pending retirement, etc., etc., etc. An attempt to maintain progress of some sort while our feet are tangled up in our “stuff” wading through the cultural mud.
What we need to do is sit down and look for the rainbows. To muster the energy to stay up a little late, drag our tired butts outside to see the Northern Lights for what may be our only chance ever to see them. To look up from our chaos and mud towards the heavens to be touched and comforted by these natural blessings that sprinkle our lives with beauty and awe.
The pandemic was a flood that saturated our lives with fear, trauma, loss, and whiplashing change. Since that storm, we’ve been back and forth between sun and rain on ground still culturally saturated with acid rain. Us country folk know if we lose momentum, we’re caught spinning tires in the red clay mud.
I’ve been spinning in the mud of my own making, then resting and looking for rainbows. It’s time to stop wallowing, stand up, and take baby steps forward, perhaps leaving our typical mode of transportation behind — for good. Maybe we just need new tires, maybe we need an upgrade, maybe we need mudboots. But we need to quit focusing on the mud and look up.
I now believe in baby steps, in the accumulation of accomplishments declared “better than it was.” Better than it was baby steps are signs of hope. They are proof of survival, of direction, of traction and momentum. Baby steps, when combined, culminate in great strides.
I recently sprung a hole in my mud boots. My first thought was, “Time for a new pair of mud boots.” But, that only makes sense if I plan to resist the mud, or stay in the mud. But, I think I’ll just kick my boots off, sit down, squish my toes in the mud, and watch for rainbows while waiting for the Primary Election to pass. That will clear up at least some of these scattered showers.
I feel myself gaining traction. I can now see how my tossed-up cards have landed. Time to pick them up and start playing my hand, even if I do still have muddy feet.