Back to the Basics

When I first began to write seriously 20 years ago, I made myself a promise that I would only do so about the positive things that made me happy.  I told myself, I said, “self, you are going to create literature to make people feel uplifted and want to read more.”  That’s exactly what I did, it worked, and it went on for years.  When I go back read my early work, it was about love, joy and living a good life.  It was about being in a happy space and living my best life while encouraging others to do the same.  I didn’t know then what I know today about the power of the written word, but it just seemed like the write thing to do.  It’s not that during those days I wasn’t dealing with painful stuff, I just chose not to focus on it or write about it and my life reflected what I wrote.  I jotted down what I wanted in my love life and I found that.  I wrote about living on an island and I did that.  My life wasn’t perfect, but I was pretty happy and it was all due to the things I wrote about and focused on.

Now, when I look at my life today, it completely reflects the things that I began to write about when I broke my promise to myself.  After I finally had the wonderful beginnings of the life I truly wanted, I allowed outside experiences and fear to consume me as well as influence my writing style.  I began to write about how I was unhappy about not having the money to pay for the things my family needed.  I wrote about the fear of losing my family due to my struggles.  I began to write about the serious issues I was having as a co-parent.  I began to focus on all the things that were wrong in my life instead of staying on track with what was right.  Ever since then, I have been on a downward spiral.  Every bit of happiness I had created for myself, I lost and it is all chronicled in my tattered collection of spiral notebooks.  I found myself thinking I was cursed and trying to figure out who I wronged.  I have also blamed God for not loving me and leaving me for dead (see that post here).  I was feeling like (s)he was torturing me by making me watch another family suffer from no money or the basic necessities of life.  I had just become angry and the more I fed the anger, the worse my life seemed to get. Well, this morning when I woke up, I promised myself I would go back to the basics.  See, I realized in a dream last night that the person I wronged, was none other than myself.  I broke my own promise to me and I have been being punished for it ever since.  Please understand, when I give someone my word, I go to great lengths to make sure it is kept.  What I don’t think I understood was when I made that promise to myself 20 years ago, that  I was a person too and breaking a promise to myself was just as serious.  Sometimes, I think we put so much focus on helping others, that we forget that we must help ourselves and be honest with ourselves first.  If you can’t be true to you, who can you be true too?

Now that I have come to this damning revelation, I know what has to be done.  I am putting my focus on the things that are right in my life instead of harping on what’s wrong and what I don’t have or don’t like.  I also have to encourage my family to do the same thing.  I will also no longer write or speak on negativity as I know now full well how damaging it is.  I will stay away from long viewings of the news.  I am going to cocoon myself in a world of happiness, success, giving, and wealth.  That is the only way to re-write my wrongs.  Life is too short to be so caught up and focused on the
negative.  Currently, I have put myself in a position to where everything is wrong financially.  You know what though, money problems can literally fix themselves in a matter of moments…seriously.  Those problems are going to go away and once they are gone, I now know how to keep them away.  I have to be true to myself, my thoughts, my emotions and erase all fears.  I am going back to the basics of happiness and put my world together and live the life of happiness I started two decades ago.

be Peace…be Love…be One