Confusion is a funny thing. Sometimes it masquerades as boredom, sometimes frustration, stuckness, or the classy shiny object syndrome. I think confusion is one of those seemingly harmless but actually extremely sinister evil things that keeps the Good Lord’s work from getting done and keeps people from contentment. It can shape shift to make us believe we are noble and honorable because we take things so seriously that we can’t possibly come to a decision all the while the days float on, years pass by and our lack of decision and loyalty to confusion build something of a confused ecosystem and life.
I’ve been ankle deep in some harmless confusion for quite some time. I’ll just go ahead and blame the pandemic, the world, imperfect people and mom guilt for it and say it’s done me zero good.
I called up a friend the other day. One I hadn’t spoken to in well over a year. I rarely do this, but I found myself in a place where I needed the right friend to talk to me about just the right thing and, by golly, she delivered. I am a churchy person and I do believe in the God of heaven and earth and how he uses people to give us the messages we need to hear and I do believe he used my friend Leigh to cut through the standing water of confusion and point me in the direction of decision.
The remedy for confusion is decision. The antidote to confusion is clarity. What do I know? Write that down. What do I believe is true? Write that down. What do I have permission to do? Write it. What would be the coolest? Write that also down.
Turns out. I might still be a musician. I might still wanna play some shows. I might know the remedy to this confusion and it might just be allowing myself to be myself again. What a concept.
I’m a recovering people pleaser, I’m a mother and a woman conditioned to perform for stars and ribbons and cookies in order to earn approval from fellow mothers and women and also people who score the performances of mothers and women in big and small ways. All that shit is the opposite of clarity and decision. It will exhaust and frustrate even the best of us and the race and competition is endless, was designed to be impossible, the goal posts are always moving and the goal IS most definitely to frustrate and defeat women and mothers and also everyone in the whole world. Fear does that. In an attempt to avoid risk, it burns everything down.
So here I am. Trying to shed the muddy, water-logged garments I’ve been dragging around. I’m taking the wet soggy mess and wringing out the doubt, the fear, the good girl bullshit, the expectation, the what it looks like, and underneath it all is pretty much everything I already knew. I like music. I like playing music.
Yes, I’m older. Yes, I’m not real camera ready anymore. Yes, I worry that my work is not cool enough or current enough, but oh well. I think I’m going to do it anyway. Why? Because life’s too damn short, the rent is too damn high, the stakes are super low, and I don’t want to be an Admin. Asst. and I have no qualifications for proper employment of any kind. So, we do this. We do it bravely and decidedly and that will make all the difference. High five.