I've come to find

that if I don't start my mornings somewhat early and with some amount of purpose and vigor, I don't start my day -- ever. I stay in pjs and messy hair and a sleepy face.

Right now I am reading Esther Perel's book "The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity".

I'm not sure if reading about affairs and their inner-workings is making me feel more confident and okay with the nebulousness and potential of anyone in the world having an affair (happy, unhappy, open relationship or closed), or if it makes me feel like the world is off it's rocker -- screwed. Stupid.

The thing about me when I'm in a place of uncertainty in life -- such as this moment when I am back living at my parents house having finished school, waiting to sub and then waiting to have enough money from subbing to get board certified and then get a MT job -- I want to change everything in my life. I want to control it all. Pick up marble after marble of uncertainty and hold them in my fists for safekeeping. But inevitably it ends up being that I can't control that many marbles of uncertainty and when I pick up one I drop another, and the more I recognize I can't hold, can't control, the more panicked I get and the more I try to pick them up and tighten my grip on them.

Do you think it's true that some people are better at living with uncertainty? Some people are more adapted to or biologically programmed for living in a state of perpetual uncertainty?

Or is that more of a primitive human thing and everyone has it and some people are just better at making themselves practice living in that place of uncertainty?

I guess I could try and do that. Try and give myself exercises to practice being okay with not knowing and not being able to control outcomes.

But here's the thing. I'm sort of a contradiction; a walking oxymoron. At the same time that I fear uncertainty and not knowing what the hell life holds or even the next day, I ALSO really love mystery. It's why I love music. It's why I love big beautiful things like the stars, Crater Lake, love, eyes, ship wrecks and unexplored land. The uncertainty is also the gleeful excitement that "anything could happen".

What a weird place to be in. On one hand I am trying to mitigate potential for things happening that I don't know so that bad things won't possibly happen. And on the other I am craving the unknown and it's spontaneous ways because it can be some of the most exciting/fulfilling stuff.

I guess it comes down to me deciding how I want to spend my time, and what I want to build towards.

It goes back to the quote that I used in my final presentation for my music therapy internship:

“Water is fluid, soft, and yielding. But water will wear away rock, which is rigid and cannot yield. As a rule, whatever is fluid, soft, and yielding will overcome whatever is rigid and hard. This is another paradox: what is soft is strong.” -- Lao Tzu

I want to be soft and yielding, curious (exploring the rock, accepting it, enveloping it into my life as a reality), and strong. Water wears away at rock.