The Biggest Takeaway Is: Be True to You
By: Carolyn Riker
Tags: Life Lessons, Society, Self, Advice, Self-awareness

You see, I’m trying so hard to keep both feet in this world that I’m wilting. I’m trying to stay just above the translucent watermark which demands me (and most of us) to be only one way.

It feels like we always need a ‘brand’ to fit into a paradigm that demands success. Where busyness is praised, and how the impeccably laid out articles may or may not be seen, while poetic prose is seen as fruitless and maybe even delegated to too easy to write and lazy.

I’ve tried the essays with the titles and subtitles. The research and links. Famous quotes from dead folks but that doesn’t always feed something deeper inside of me.

I get too busy and focus too hard on trying to fit in. That’s when I lose who I am.

Without my daydreams and poeticness, my soul, well, she wilts.

Especially when she can’t seem to find the time to sit with the trees and hear their leaves sing.

Ample swells of solitude are necessary. It’s where I see colors and hear words. Solitude helps me to feel beneath the feels and dive deeper. I become less of this world and freer.

The problem is I get caught up in the swift undercurrents of mainstream. Namely, capitalistic ways where I worry my cashflow isn’t enough and how the rent is due, and groceries need to be bought. How I’m too busy and overstretched because I begin to believe that’s the right way for me.

Which ferrets me down older trails of worry. What if someday I won’t be able to afford the dream of a tiny cottage near the sea? What if, I never meet someone real and kind who won’t deceive me?

How do I stop the perennial voices telling me where did you go wrong?

And why can’t you blend as well as the others do?

My best advice to those perennial voices? Go to hell. They are a curse keeping me from walking between a dozen worlds.

I am driftwood and married to the sea. My softness is a strength of sensitive.

High thread count isn’t where I lay my head. Instead I count on tiny comforts: a kitchen window letting me breathe the sights I see.

Counting the floorboards that pace with me as I write through a thought. I count on the walls to protect me. I count on friends to be real. I count on the colors of transparency.

The fast track, the popular, the high-end glam — isn’t for me.

Instead of buying shoes and fancy things, I buy books, sip espressos from a tiny machine tucked in the corner of my kitchen.

I have to remind myself this is who I am.

I love to daydream and when I don’t something dies inside of me.

Someday soon I’ll get that sweet little home by the sea and finish writing that novel swimming in my dreams.

And someday, I’d like to share my life with someone who accepts all my dents, wrinkles, and encourages my solitude; maybe brings me an espresso and we respect each other’s dreams.

Writing this, without worry of stats and being popular really helps.

It switches up the downs and zeros in on the nature of my heart. Helping me to let go of who I should be and enjoy the authenticity of being me.

The one who needs to daydream and dances with poetic prose, walking between this world and others, down by the sea.

The biggest takeaway is….

Be true to you and let your soul breathe.