Somewhere one of you got out of the shower, looked and said. “How the fuck did I end up here.”  It May feel like you can’t move or at the least don’t want to bother. But you do. Because you have. For a long time, actually. And you’ll continue to. Because that’s the only real option. What you do can change and there a way out of despair and fear. May not feel that way right now, but there is. You’re just going to have to fake it until you figure it out. You’ve been doing that a while now. It’s almost art at this point. I know. Because I’m a fucking new age Van Gogh. Crazy swirls, screams held in and thankfully. Two full ears. 

One of the things that resonates in this day and age is honesty. Our world is based on the lies we live with. Both that we tell ourselves or that we tell others.  I know because I tell them too. The “I’m okay” one is the biggest and it starts in the mirror.  It’s the way you become an artist. It’s the path to creating a masterpiece of of subtle deception to yourself. Thick oil brush strokes added layer after layer after layer. 

I say all this not to indict you as a liar and deceiver. Hell you’re already too hard on yourself. I’m telling you because the good news about being an artist is that you control the brush. You control the faking it. You control the lies you tell yourself. I know because I hold it too. 

We keep making these fake paintings for a ton of reasons, and I can’t list yours. You already know them. The biggest one though, I’m willing to bet, is that you don’t know how to get away from it. You don’t know how to knock over the easel because you think the painting is better than the real you. It’s not.  Everyone else knows it and you should too. 

You are exquisite as masterpieces are created in the spaces between the brush strokes and in the mistakes and in working through. Unlike a lot of things i tell you, there is no clever step by step, but I do have one.  Try and face one thing you have painted yourself into a corner with. It doesn’t have to be the worst thing you think about yourself. Just a thing you can alter. Here. I’ll show you. 

I’m not a perfect anything. Business person, husband, friend or father. I put on a facade that I am larger than life and on some days I capture all that lightning and it works out. Most days, I’m overwhelmed with too much. I don’t tell my loved ones any of this because I don’t want to burden them with it. In not doing so. I burden them with me being scattered, aloof, not present. Really the same thing as just spitting it out. 

See. That wasn’t so hard. 

Now you. Take a second today to assess the you you’re portraying and the you you think you should be. See if the you you’re putting out there can be a little closer to what’s inside. 

Uncap the bottle. 

Baby steps. 

#hugsandhi5s