The (now) longer nails on my left hand.
Some time in late September of last year, I stopped biting my fingernails. I don’t know the day, hour and minute at which I ceased a lifelong habit, but I can tell you I’m quite pleased with myself anyway.
I’ve been hesitant to mention it here, in large part because of the significance. I bit my fingernails for my entire life. I’m pretty sure I stopped sucking on my digits as a toddler and started to bite my nails off the next day. It was an activity as normal as breathing for as long as I can remember.
What’s puzzling to me about it is the unceremonious manner in which this habit ended. I simply stopped without thinking about it. Seven days later I had to find a nail file and shape my newly-grown orange peelers. (Luckily, I inherited an antique “Diamond Deb” nail file from my grandma. It’s actually coated in diamond dust, making it an amazing file.) My new habit is filing my nails once a week.
Maybe we don’t always need to face our bad habits head-on. Maybe it’s possible to do an end-run around them. Or maybe we should focus on our good habits and they’ll crowd out the bad ones? Maybe there is a lesson here related to identifying my goals. I don’t know for sure, but I’m quite happy to have shed this habit.
Malibu, California sunset, February 13, 2010
Every now and then, something or someone will cause me to ask myself, “where are you going?” (I mean “going” in the metaphorical sense and not the literal sense. Though, knowing where you are going *in life* often means actually going somewhere too.)
Very rarely can I respond to that simple question with a simple answer. That makes me uncomfortable. I wonder about it. Where *am* I going? And the obvious next question is: “what are my goals?”
Does everyone have defined goals? Am I the only one who hasn’t put definitive goals to paper yet? What does that mean?
So, the other night when something spurred me to ask myself, “where am I going,” I decided it was time to get a serious answer down. A simple one derived from a few goals. I might use a few posts here to explore this question more, but I’m determined to get a firm grip on what it means to know where I’m going, why I want to go there, and the inevitable change that comes with knowing where you want to go.
So to start, I’m just going to ask everyone if they have goals. Do you? If you do, do you know where you going? Don’t worry if you don’t want to comment here, I’ll probably ask you in-person.
walk away. exit the building. turn the key. turn the radio up. this song is like a hug. i’ll sing it until i’m hoarse. the ocean waves hello. and again. and again. it’s so dark by the time i get here. but that won’t last forever.
dinner is green and orange and dark green. colors that smell as good as they taste. mind is empty. ish. i wonder what i’ll do before the end of it all? still a few hours to go. maybe less.
strum a bit. i’m glad my guitar is within reach, even if i still only know those same 15 songs. at least a few of them are my own.
wash it all off, the day where little made sense. shampoo it out of my hair too. don’t try too hard to make sense of it. remember the people, not the place. at the end of it all, just be able to sleep soundly, smile about it and leave it there. at the end of it all, is the beginning.
