Overhaul

Do you ever get to the point in your life where you realize you need a significant overhaul? Not just a minor adjustment. I mean, a complete 180. I think at some points in our lives we outgrow our former selves and we find that who we always thought we were isn't who we actually want to be. Sometimes we try to make minor changes but nothing seems to take away the uncomfortable-in-your-own-skin feeling. You know, dogs shed a winter coat several (if not quite a lot of) hairs at a time, but snakes usually just shed their skin in one fell swoop. Wouldn't that be nice? Just completely slough off the bad and start fresh. One of the problems for me, though, is that a lot of times I don't know what it is supposed to look like under that old skin. And I have to know that before jumping in. What am I going to turn into? Do I even know what I want to be afterwards? Does that hold us back? I want to control everything and I want to know what the steps ahead of me look like before I get there. But that's not usually how it works, is it? It usually requires a leap of faith. So I guess we just need to be brave enough to venture out into the unknown. One of my favorite quotes is, "Life isn't about finding yourself, it's about creating yourself". We can paint the pictures and we can write the stories. Sometimes that means forging forward and sometimes that means turning around, making a complete 180 and walking the other way. To be the writer of your own story is to live yellow.