beartotheclaire

Will anyone tell me it’s possible? I’m sick of feeling so silly, so abnormal, so irresponsible. I want to be successful. Ever seen the bumper stickers that say, ‘Have a day.’? That’s what I want. “How was your day today, Claire?” “Meh, it was a day.”

Not ‘Absolutely great!’
Not ‘Lame.’

Just, ‘It was a day.’

That sounds really nice to me.

The bus analogy goes like this:

We are all drivers of our bus. The top part that says the destination contains all of our personal core values, whatever those may be. All of those values have to be long-term, not goals (ie ‘having and maintaining a loving family and home’, not ‘having a husband and three kids’). In our bus are passengers. They come on and off at different stops and they can be all different things, good and bad, emotions or real-life people, but they all take the same shape and form on your bus. They all become monsters.

Sometimes, some of your passengers like to get a little rowdy. Usually the worst behaving of them sit up at the front right by you. And when they get rowdy, one of them will usually come up and try to distract you. They’ll say, “Hey, Claire, word up. I need you to take a left at this next stop sign or I’m going to make you feel like REAL crap.” No normal bus driver would take this, but usually the monsters that pull this are named ‘fear’ or ‘pain’ or ‘discomfort’. So you either take that left turn, or, like he said, you’re going to be in emotional distress.

However, if you listen and take that left, you’re off your path. You’re no longer on your way to living life according to your values, and once ‘fear’ or ‘pain’ or ‘discomfort’ the monster has realized that it can get away with something like that, they’re just going to keep on doing it until you end up driving off a cliff.

I personally have lived my life taking left turns for these passengers. It’s going to be uncomfortable completing my degree because the novelty of the classes has worn off, and it’s going to be painful to face the fact that maybe I’m not as smart as other people who will be getting their masters degree, and I’m definitely afraid of trying because then I might fail, but it’s about time that I took control of my bus. It’s not going to make ‘pain’ and ‘fear’ and ‘discomfort’ very happy, but they’re not the ones that really have to get somewhere and get paid. I have somewhere to go, guys. Step aside.

I have wet dreams about achieving this.