Spring Cleaning

I have had the very seasonal urge to do some Spring cleaning. It appears that I have decided to start this process with the blog. I was going through a folder with some discarded ideas and came across this one. It is titled “Go as You Mean to Go On.” It strikes me as funny since I never finished it. I think memories led me only so far down a path and then I was stuck. Only later did I come back to the acting topic to try and tackle it alone. That being said, I have decided to go ahead and publish as is in its unfinished state. Since the topic deals with decisions and living with the results, it is never a finished topic anyway.

Let’s face it; change is hard for all of us. It can be small changes like switching from 2% to 1% milk or sweeping changes like having a child or immigrating to another country. Regardless of your chosen transformation, you either accept it gracefully (honestly, can you really taste a difference?) or you completely spiral downward into an existential crisis and start pondering age old questions like “Why am I here?” and “What is my purpose?” Perhaps I exaggerate on the level of navel-gazing, but you get my point. If changing the milk you drink causes you to question your existence, then you probably have some bigger issues at play and should seek professional help.

I think we all question the choices we make and the wonder if the results were worth it. Some might say this is a pointless exercise. The past is the past, right? What’s done cannot be undone so why waste the energy on looking back rather than forward? What is the phrase I am thinking of here? “Go as you mean to go on.” Is that it? I don’t know. It seems like I heard or read that line somewhere recently. Anyway, it seems to have stuck with me for the time being, so maybe I am just pondering what that phrase means to me.

To me it sounds like a battle cry of sorts. It sounds decisive and focused and conjures images of plowing through obstacles as if they don’t exist. It also makes me think about something out of the Successories catalog. Is anyone else having visions of some guy hanging by one hand off the shear face of a cliff? I may not have that sort of “I eat obstacles for breakfast” determination, but I do find myself thinking about the type of determination I do have.

Have I taken my life in the direction I thought I would take it? Good grief, no. There have been thousands of decisions along the way that shaped the place I find myself now. The good or the bad of it is less important than what I did with the results. Looking back at how I got here is like following a trail of bread crumbs through a maze.

I am reminded of some exercise I did in elementary school where we had to draw a picture of the type of career we wanted when we grew up. I believe I drew a picture of a secretary. That’s funny to me now. Of course, I also remember wanting to be a fireman and an actress. The actress bug had me in its grips for quite some time. The idea of always pretending to be someone different really appealed to me. I felt it in every fiber of my being that I would be really good at it. So what happened?

It was at this point I faltered. It amuses me to think about the elementary school exercise and wonder about what kind of drawing I would produce today. I still think secretary is off the list, although I can still appreciate the orderliness of it. Perhaps what I should be questioning is my love of office supplies?