Hello from the other side (of the lake).

Sitting in bed, with a head cold, a dog, and a very fancy frozen yogurt dinner, I decided that I wanted to go back and find my old blog. With an episode of Star Trek: Next Generation on (in addition to a very comfortable pair of Star Wars pjs, for nerdy balance) I started digging around and found www.mistakesbythelake.blogspot.com. I read the posts. I felt feelings. Damnit.  Me two years ago sounds like…me now. I was expecting to hear the voice of someone much younger or at least more naïve. Yes, I know 2 years is not a long amount of time. So much has happened though! My internal voice should sound much more sage-like and world-worn, now that I had gotten engaged, broken up, threw all the plans up in the air, moved back to Michigan and started that not-as-fun-as-it-sounds process of “self-love”. I felt like I would feel so far away from that author writing in May of 2013.

So what to do? The whole plan here was to look at that and say “Oh man, how little I knew…and now, well now my heart has been slammed around and I have this knowledge to share”. So I thought about it. I ate the rest of my froyo . I looked at the dog, which is what I do when I want answers. I just stare at her perfect dog face like it’s an oracle. Then I reread the posts. And I did some cries. Here’s what I got:

• I know things now I didn’t know then. For example, there were things that made me think “if that happened, I wouldn’t survive”, like having to call off your wedding and  selling your wedding dress to a girl off Craigslist while you’re packing to move out of the city you’d loved for 8 years. But then I did survive. That lesson is priceless.
• I am the same person who wants to find peace, who gets anxious, who wants very badly to love her body, and feels loved by people and knows she has about 3 times the amount of emotion that she is able to handle on any given day.
• Here’s one: I’ve made some sort of peace with my creative process. It isn’t the art I thought I would make, which is just another way life is all “OH YOU HAD PLANS HAHAHA YOU DON’T GET THOSE” and it’s magical.

I am by a different lake now. I am still making mistakes. I am still moving forward. I don’t need to start over anymore* because I’m fine like this. Headcold, weirdo pjs, stinky dog guru…all of it. I want to tell you about it. I’m not trying to sell you my lifestyle, I promise. Like, it’s not for sale and I don’t even know what I would sell you…time with my dog oracle? Fresh nerd-wear?  Maybe (I hope) you’ll tell me about some of your stuff, and we’ll be fine together, and maybe even better than fine sometimes. Xo

*I had to start the blog over, but that’s just because I didn’t like the words “blogspot.com” for some reason.