Resistance

2/06/2012 battle , happiness , trust 0 Comments

I never really thought of myself as a person who resisted the way of things.

Do you know what I mean?

Remember this prayer? "Lord grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."

When Kevin mentioned that prayer the other day, it was like somebody reached over and thumped me on the forehead.

No shit.

Duh.

For years now, I’ve been resisting a lot of things in my life because I narrowed my vision on a different life, instead of accepting the life I have and being content with it.

I told myself I didn’t belong here, living in a farming community of 1,800 people in rural North Dakota, using the following reasons:

1.) They think Arizona is a wonderful place and don’t understand why I moved from Arizona to North Dakota.

2.) People here don’t understand me, and during the six years Kevin and I have been here, there has been nobody we’ve connected with. We have no peeps.

3.) Some of the people here are prejudice. I’m not, and feel more alienated from them because of it.

There are a few more reasons, but the above three are the ones I’ve been battling with for a long time now, which has caused me to resist the life I have right now instead of trusting in the universe that I’m where I’m at for a reason.

Whatever that reason is, I don’t know, but it’s time for me stop resisting it, and to keep in mind if in the future I’m meant to be somewhere else, a way will present itself, right?

The same goes for my dream of becoming a novelist, and making enough money from it so I can stay home and not have to work for somebody else.

I recently learned I can’t put all my happy eggs in one basket, if you know what I mean. I can’t base all my happiness on my books.

It’s not healthy.

I have to stop looking through the telescope at the life I want, and find the joy in the life I have now.

I have to trust in it.

That doesn’t mean for me to give up on my writing dream and what I want out of this life. But what it does mean is, I need to relax and stop resisting where I’m at right now.

And to be honest, despite everything else, this is a wonderful town I live in. I don’t have to lock my doors, there’s only one stop light, most people are nice, five-year-olds can ride their bike to the store to get a pop without us worrying about them.

So yeah, I think the advantages and disadvantages level out, it’s just a matter of which one I’m willing to focus on the most. And trust me, focusing all my energy on the disadvantages is not the way to go.

Anyway, I wrote this post and put it out there for you to read because I thought maybe somebody who is reading this might be going through a similar ordeal. Also, it’s part of the self-publishing journey I’m on, and I want to share every piece of that journey with you, which includes doing battle with the conflicts within myself.

I have another battle I’ve been struggling with for weeks–the blurb.

Once I conquer that, I’ll write a post about it and share with you how I did it.

Trust me, those of you who are planning on self-publishing will want to read it because writing a blurb is harder than writing a query.

Seriously.

Now I want to leave you with a quote by Prentice Ritter, played by Robert Duvall in the television western Broken Trail:

"We’re all travelers in this world. From the sweet grass to the packing house. Birth ‘til death. We travel between eternities."

Take care you guys. I’ll be back on Friday. :)