So my head has been a mess these past few days. I haven’t been feeling well and neither have my babies. Life is just not so exciting when you feel like crap and everyone around you feels like crap too. It makes for a real crappy time.

I have still been trying to work on my book proposal and get my ideas down and test my recipes, but the motivation has suddenly disappeared and so I am not really giving it my best. I have found that this happens periodically for me and I hate when it does. I mean hate as in a very strong aversion accompanied by a feeling of fear that I will never get it back.

I like being full of energy and ideas, bursting with excitement, joy and inspiration. In those times, life just seems to go so swimmingly and I get so much accomplished, making me feel completely awesome. When that motivation goes out the window I find life so dull and dreary.

So I what do I do? I try and get it back! I start baking and cooking, making messes, screwing up recipes or burning cookies! 😮 I NEVER burn cookies! I exercise even when I don’t feel like it, trying to get energy in my day and I exhaust myself. I try and write a blog with a lack of feeling behind it. I do anything and everything to try and get that energetic, excited state back and when I do, I suffer.

Why do I suffer? I suffer because of my state of mind and its attachment to that feeling of excitement and joy. Attachment is the root of all suffering. It doesn’t matter what we do in life, anytime we form attachments to anyone or anything, we suffer. We can see this happening all the time, all around us. People have attachments to their past, to other people, to other people’s approval of them,  to their body image, to their job, to their feelings. We attach ourselves to something or someone and then when that something or someone isn’t there for us anymore, we suffer.

I have spent a lot of time learning about my attachments and coming to a place where I realize that it is perfectly human to form them. I used to want to be super spiritual and transcend all material attachments, but I am coming to accept my human self and its needs too. I know that I am not my body or my thoughts, but have accepted that a part of being human is having a body and thoughts. I can’t pretend that I don’t feel and think. I am human too.

What I am practicing though, is being aware of my thoughts and feelings and also being aware of my attachment to them. Like this feeling of excitement over my book and the fun I was having making recipes, to think that I am going to have that excitement and enthusiasm every single day is just unrealistic, yet somehow I really wanted to live there. I want to be happy and excited all the time but really, where is the fun in that? How would I ever be able to enjoy being excited and happy if I didn’t have days where things were dull and boring?

Again, it all boils down to balance. Some days you feel good, some days you feel bad. Some days you feel excited, some days you feel bored. Some days you are sick, some days you are healthy. Some days you are full of energy and some days you would rather just sit around, waste time and eat a ton of burnt cookies (or is that just me?).

Life is all about ups and downs. If we didn’t have moments of feeling down, how would we ever know joy? If we didn’t have times of feeling sick, how would we ever know health?

I sometimes wonder about posting these thoughts when it seems that no one else does, but I can’t pretend that life is all coming up roses. It just isn’t. I honestly wonder if people are really human like me or if they just live in their bubble world for all of their lives, denying any real thought or feeling.

Anthony Robbins once said about life, “If you think it is working as it’s always perfect, then what you would have is a brake light. What you really want is a life and a life has many seasons. A life that is all summer you would burn out on. All winter you would freeze to death. God is really cool, he figured after winter to put Spring. After night, daytime. And after pain is always a new opportunity.”

This is what I am learning, you can’t force anything. Life is all about change and the different seasons that we need to go though in order to learn to appreciate the things that really matter. There is a time for everything and a natural flow to life. Trying to fight that natural flow is meaningless because everything that is happening is supposed to be happening and is happening to teach us something. Somehow this one (although I am well aware of it) is still a hard one for me to grasp.

I want to be able to enjoy my life in each season that I go through without attachment to the past or to my impermanent feelings, whether they are of excitement or of complacency. Mostly, I want to remember that I can’t force anything.