JUST BEING THE NEW ME by Red Dawn

Red Dawn took the Grind Café Writers’ Group “Free-write Challenge” at this year’s Summer Dreams Literary Arts Festival at Trout Lake, Vancouver. The brave drew random prompts then took a break from the fest to go sit under a tree, and let it rip for 10 minutes without stopping in a free-write—and see what emerged. Braver yet, they agreed to let us post their raw version. So remember, this is unedited, unfinished output. Thanks to all participants.
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Prompt: Can you think of one area of your life that you’d be willing to change by 10pm tonight?
Write about that—what, how and why that.

I recently woke up (figuratively and literally) to realize I was no longer comfortable in my current iteration of existence. The person I had spent the last five to ten years creating and who I had admittedly enjoyed being, through and despite all the chaos created, no longer fits comfortably in the vision of who I thought I’d be now—and more so, the person I want to be.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not about self-loathing or trying to be someone I’m not. But my vision and my integrity, my desires and my dreams have shifted and refined somewhere along the way.

I spent a few weeks in intense angst, lamenting over how I’d gotten here and how I could implement all of the overwhelmingly vast changes that would need to occur, in order to be this new version of me that I was so hungry for and so ready to be.

It felt both overwhelming and inspiring…but most of all, it felt impossible. So I poured a glass of wine and drank thru it, and I cooked up a Commercial Drive-inspired feast and ate through it, and I pulled out my long-ignored journal and I wrote through it. And all the while the burning question kept coming up over and over and over……………..

“WHO do I want to be?” And then on the third night of Insomnia-ridden pacing through my house, my fridge, my neighbours’ garden, LOL, it suddenly seemed so very simple: the fog lifted, per perspective shifted, and both clarity and sleep came.

JUST BE.

The journey to the new me was already weeks underway, first steps already long behind me. So tonight, by ten o’clock, I will proudly utter the phrase, “JUST BE” IN Italian, while I strum my one guitar chord (that I’m now 15 minutes too late to go learn!).
XO

©2013 Red Dawn