it's the journey, not the arrival

Happy New Year, my friends!

As I think back on 2012 I realize it was truly a very challenging year for me.  The kind of challenge that forces you to break open your heart, pull out all the pieces, and then figure out how to put it back together.  2012 was a year of waiting, lots of waiting, and learning difficult life lessons while I did so.

2011, on the other hand, was a great year!  (or perhaps it's been long enough ago I don't remember how hard that year was?)  2011 was the birth of so many exciting things.  Fictionist was in Rolling Stone magazine multiple times and they got signed to Atlantic Records!  Our friends and neighbors were cheering us on, I mean, we were even cheering us on - it was great!  I fell deeply in love with art.  I started to create sketches and paintings that I felt connected to and something deep down inside me said "this is really important".  2011 was full of new beginnings and the birth of a promising future.  Yes, there were still challenges, but challenges smothered in frosting and topped with colorful sprinkles.  Yum.

2012 was different, it was quiet and slow.  I was loving creating but I found myself in a very difficult emotional place.  I had worked through the first huge creative hump without realizing a much bigger and scarier challenge that lay ahead of me.  The second hump involved lots of heart breaking and rearranging, as mentioned previously, among other challenges.  Hum and the band worked tirelessly on their album and, because of the nature of the business, the progress is slow.  Good.  And slow.  Of course, all potential momentum is waiting around the arrival of the album, and so we wait.

As we waited I grew anxious.  Concerned.  Nervous.  The waiting brewed my anxieties and turned them to fear.  I so desperately wanted to arrive and I think I believed the arrival would squelch my fears.  After a number of months of unhappiness I learned a valuable lesson.  And not a lesson like that one time when I read quote on a paper cup that really made me think ah!, but the kind of lesson that could only be learned through tears shed, a heart rearranged, and realizing you just grew a bit older.

Life is about the journey and not the arrival.  True happiness should lie in the journey, and if it does, then moments of arriving, or not arriving, can come and go as they please.  After all,  the duration of the journey far outweighs the fleeting moments of arrival, so happiness reserved for those moments is an un-lived life saving itself for disappointment and illusions of happiness.

I know, because I've been there.

As I begin a new year I choose to be happy today - because regardless of what happens in the future, today is just as good as tomorrow, and tomorrow is as good as the next.

I wish all of you a incredibly joyful today, tomorrow, and rest of the year and I hope that you will find joy in every unpredictable step of your journey.

With love,
hue