The Mess is Success?

How many of you have thought to yourselves that once you overcome a certain obstacle in life or time period, then finally you be able to breath easier and just relax.  It could be that your waiting to get caught up with your bills, waiting for summer to get here so you can use your vacation to work around the house, or maybe your waiting for that next step in life whether it be college, your first job, or a new career. 

Its possible you are going through some hard times and need to borrow money, cut back on your budget, end a relationship, take care of one of your children or one of your parents.  You constantly look towards the future when the mess will finally be over or "when things get better".  But haven't you already had the back to back crisis occur at least once?  You know, just when you end one hardship, a whole brand new problem appears out of nowhere.  Its a neverending messy life isn't it?

If you keep waiting for the "what's next" and if you don't have peace and joy in the present moment, you are missing out on life.  Don't get me wrong, its great to have goals and future plans, but if you are constantly worried about the future, how are you ever able to enjoy the moment you are in right now? Love you life right now.  Your probably not enjoying the moment because you think its too messy.  I could be grief, anger, failure, disappointement, and the list goes on. We tend to throw all the bad stuff in life into this one category and we keep in private.  We don't want the world to know that we aren't as great as we really seemed to be.

I often wonder if we all just talked about the mess in our lifes and shared concern as well as motivation with one another, would we see some growth in society as a whole.  With pressure from family and the competitionwith our peers, SUCCESS has become the number one objective in life.  Success to some could mean starting a family and settling down in a house in a small safe community. 

Success from where I came from and that driving passion to make it to the top were based mostly on status, money, recognition, and position.  It could also represent all the places that you have traveled, all the things that you have seen, and all those experiences that have made you more diverse and well-rounded.   

These seem to be the most popular questions in order to find out more about a person. "Where did you go to college?  What company do you work for and what is your title? Where and how big is your house?  What kind of car do you drive?  Where did you last go on vacation?  How big was your wedding? Wedding Dress? Ring?  Is that bag Coach or Chanel?"

After you get the answers to these questions, you can finally draw up a conclusion of who that person really is.  Right? Wrong.  What have you learned about them? Now take a look at the next set of questions. 

"What are you passionate about? What are your hobbies?  Do you consider yourself spiritual at all?  What is one weird strange fact about you? What do you wish you could take back from your past? Do you admit your failures and disappointments to anybody? At your high school 10 year reunion what do you want your peers to remember you for?"

Are you with me still?  Now the first set of questions was an excellent way for you to know what a person does.  This is what they look like from the outside and how society .  You can't really find out who a person truly is without learning more about them not just what they have done or what they do.  And so when you start learning more about them, the messy life could start to reveal itself.  This is when you find out how people deal with mess.  This could be the single most imporant factor for me when determining a person's strength and character.  "How well do you deal with the Mess?"  Son in other words, when life takes its blows at you one at at time, how do you react and how do you plan to clean up the mess. 

You see for me, how well somebody handles the mess is a sign of that persons success.  And for those who have experienced more and more mess and those not afraid to admit the mess they are currently in, that is success.  So is "The Mess Really Success"

Here are some questions to ask yourself about life.  They really get you thinking don't they?  Feel free to answer the questions below or comment on this post about anything. 

How do you become your true self if you haven't been faced with any challenges?

What is success really? 

Who set the standard for that? 

So you're going off of society's standards for success or God's?


Peace and Hearts
Kristin

Confess The Mess: My First Series For Guest Bloggers

All of us have messy lives.  The mess can be emotional, financial, physical, spiritual, sexual, or a "combo mess".  From what I have experienced and learned in this entire process is that when one area is affected by the mess, the other areas soon start to show signs of a messy future.  It is best to clean out the mess before it multiplies. I just realized that I'm watching hoarders right now while writing this post.  This has got to be our sign and/or warning that if we don't take care of our messy life, we could end up as a hoarder with both physical and emotional junk that's so great it makes it on television. We don't want to ever have our mess consume our life that much.  Unless that is, your goal is simply to make it on television and this is your last resort. 

"Confess The Mess" was inspired by one of my readers.  She is a "closet writer" which is what I have decided to call those individuals who do not claim to be writers and wish to remain anonymous.  I'm so excited that this blog has turned out to be something that so many of my readers can relate to.  I randomly chose a title that ended up having multiple meanings about life. The best part is that I really chose it because it made fun of me for actually being a little bit messy.

If you need to confess your mess in life and have no other outlet, writing seems to be one of the more popular ways to express feelings and emotions.  For those struggling with the decision of whether or not to remain anonymous or not, please don't ever beat yourself up about being private. That is who you are and as a part of embracing who you are, you should fully accept your individual personality.

Stay tuned for the anonymous writers as they join my blog for the series "Confess The Mess"

Peace and Hearts
Kristin

Mess On The Move

On Friday, March 11, 2011, me and Coco started out journey back to Virginia.  It was three years ago and one month exactly when I got on the plane for California. I can't really begin to explain all the thoughts and feelingsI have in just this one post.  So of course that is why I have this blog and I'm trying to write a book.  

I still can't believe that my car made the trip again.  My car is 5 years old this month.  Crazy huh?                 

 

We had a short stop the next morning at Sonic for breakfast. I ended up taking about an hour for a break.  Who knows where we were.  I was just following the google map. 

We stopped at a rest area later that day and played fetch for about ten minutes.  We also had a short photo shoot to capture the moment.  Coco thought she would be cute and has her tongue sticking out in this one.

Peace and Hearts

Kristin

Packing up the Mess

Packing up the Mess (March 6, 2011)

Edit the Mess: Organizing and Downsizing Pre-move

The Mess (March 5, 2011)

This is a procrastinators worst nightmare.  Believe me when I say this was so hard.  I had no motivation to pack and this junk up.  I thought once about giving everything away and just starting over, but of course I know that I would have had regrets.  Thanks to Heather, Jinell, and Stephanie, I got motivated to pack, give away items that I didn't need to carry with me, and throw out some of the junk.  Coco's anxiety kicked in around this time.  This will be the 4th move of her life and she has not even turned three yet.  My dog is extrememly diverse and adaptable.  "she get it from her mama"

Peace and Hearts

Kristin

The Mess. The Packing. The Move.

Photo taken March 5, 2011

There was a tornado that touched down earlier in Tulsa, Oklahoma leaving one girl with nothing but a mess.  Clothing, shoes, accessories, books, office supplies, souvenirs from the past, and more had been scattered all throughout the home.  One giant storm leaves this young woman with a big mess.  Her journey will be difficult and her journey could be long. But one day she will realize that the belongings she holds onto are the ones that will always be with her, as she rids herself of the clutter that is part of the mess. 

Welcome to my messy life. I hope you enjoy my adventures as I finish completing this project I refer to as "Her Journey Through The Mess"

 

Peace & Hearts

Kristin

Read, Write, Run, and Repeat

This is what I want to do daily:

Read
I have so many books that I have started but I never get around to finish them.  What a waste huh?  I start reading one about a certain subject and then it might relate to another one so I basically jump around from book to book.

Write 
All I want to do is write.  Well an addition to that now would be Video Blogging.  It is so much easier to remember not only what was said, but how it was said.  I'm thinking about going to my parent's "lake shack" and locking myself up there for a few days.

Run
I will be running everyday, sometimes twice a day with occasional breaks.  The weather is beautiful and my dog is ready to go!  This should be fun.

Repeat
So basically I would be completely happy doing the above three things over and over again. 

I have to move to the beach.  Recently I have become obsessed with Florida and pictures from there.  I have also had random people the past few months mention that they are from Florida, wanting to move there, or that they have family there.  Maybe since I was born there, I'm supposed to like go back eventually.  Just a thought. 

Peace and Love
Kristin