I am convinced I am living the best days of my life right now.   I spent a small part of the day crawled in my bed with my fingers in my ears, praying in tongues.  This wasn't because I was about to lose it, though I was pretty emotionally spent.  I wanted to keep my cortisol levels down, my body calm - and it's hard to do that when you are listening to a toddler who doesn't want to nap, scream.  He and I had rounded past an hour of this battle and I needed a window for my body physically.  It helped.  I did stay calm.  And after 4 rounds of me going in, calming and soothing, but reaffirming that he needed to take a nap and he would have to nap - and him going from calm to very angry as I left again with a "we'll play when you get up!"  - eventually, he napped. About 1 hour and 45 minutes after we started the process.

I just want you to know that this isn't a rose-colored glasses kind of proclamation.  I am living the best days of my life right now.

But after his nap, now close to 4pm, he woke up happy, and thanked me when I picked him up. We cuddled and ate apples and cheese and watched a show about trains.  We went to the play area at uvillage and he pretended to make me coffee at a little play counter - taking my make believe money, moving his hands around above my travel mug before handing it back to me with a giant smile so proud of his coffee skills.  And then he'd say "More?" and take my cup back, only to repeat the game of pretend a dozen times.  He asked me to go down the slide next to him.  When we stopped in a store and they had a childrens coloring section, we sat and colored together for 15-20 minutes. A little girl about 5 months younger than him wanted to color, and he picked up a chair and carried it over to her, right next to his and patted it for her to sit.  Then he handed her a crayon and slid his paper over toward her.  Her mother was shocked, "Wow, you are a very nice little boy."  I was more shocked.

Today at one point I thought how incredibly grateful I am for my job - being overcome by how exhausting and challenging and near breaking the nap time saga had been.  And now as I crawl into bed I think how grateful I am that I was able to spend so much time home with him today - how I never want to miss it.

I guess I knew to expect that Toddlers feel ALL the feels and at a 10, but I didn't know to expect that I, consequently, would also be feeling all the feels throughout the course of a day. 

As we finished our stories tonight, cuddled into my bed, I told him how grateful I am that God chose him to be my son, and he chose me and John to be his mommy and daddy.  I told him we were all - him, me and his daddy, very, very lucky that God chose us all for each other.  I told him how proud I was of him today for being so kind and thoughtful, and that I appreciated that he took a nap today even though it was very hard for him.  It certainly wasn't obvious if he understood much of it, but he did look at me and say "mama, dada, doggn" and smile.  So, he got the gist.

I am living the best days of my life right now. It is a fact, and it is up to me whether or not I actually enjoy them.

John and I have been listening to The Happiness Advantage by Shawn Achor and it has solidified a goal I've been considering - I'm going to write down three good things each day.  A moment with Nolan that swallowed up everything else or just made me laugh, a tender or fun moment with John, a good deed a friend, stranger or politician did in the world, a pretty flower, peaceful drive, good run, a success at the office - mine or others. 

Maybe I will write some of these here.  It can't hurt for others to see a few more positive things. 

I may not visit here often anymore, but I'm still too devoted to this old gal to move my words someplace else.  I am not one for change for changes sake. I'm one for intention, returning, and returning again. I'm for grabbing drinks with your old friends, because they are your old friends.

And yet I feel I have outgrown this place - it doesn't fit right anymore. It may be a skin I should have shed years ago.

If I don't dedicate a piece of my life to writing, I will continue with some small place empty inside me. It doesn't have to come together in a book (though I'd like that), or result in income (again, certainly would be great), but I need to be writing and it needs to be something that both frees me and stretches me.  This is where I've come back to every time I've stopped to assess. 

Currently to make room for family, work and home - and do them all as well as I can, I need to be up around 6am.  And adding another thing in doesn't sound plausible, nor do I feel it necessary. But my work is seasonal enough that when fall rolls around my hours will likely dip and my plan is to substitute in this other kind of work to my early mornings.

It's not important that I write any of this here, but with all of it in my heart the past few weeks I felt it time to pull out my old trusty macbook and put my fingers on its keys. They are a different click than my work laptop - accepting my hands in softer way. I just wanted to remember how it felt, see if it would still turn on and if we still had the same connection. I feel a bit awkward and clumsy at it really.

And that is the other part of what has been on my heart - what if its gone? What if I've taken so long getting to this one, most obvious piece of what I feel called to that I've sacrificed all the work I've done in the skill? I'm hoping its just misplaced and if I wander here enough this fall and maybe some of the mornings or late evenings leading up to it, perhaps I'll stumble upon all the pieces.

So this fall, I plan to write each morning.

Something I know:  

We help each other make it. Strong ties hold us. 

There are those anomalies of people who manage to survive, thrive and move across the world on their own. But there aren't many.  

Most of us are here because of a friend, a first job, a person who didn't have to but did. And then another, who did. Someone who showed up when they said they would, followed through, extended an offer - extended their confidence. 

I've been the recipient time and time again - my first office and then marketing job was because of someone who said "If I'll trust you with my kids - I'll trust you with my phones." That grew to: "Just show me you know how to learn." And that likely set my entire career in order.  But there was also the time my sister decided I was going to work with her - and her boss offered me a job I hadn't asked for (or really understood I was being offered) - then the girl who trained me there and called to offer me the next role.  The next two jobs I got the "traditional" way - searching, applying, interviewing, accepting, working with recruiters. 2 out of 9 jobs I received that so called "traditional way" -  6 were from relationship and respect, from doing well at a previous role and proving I could be relied on to learn. The last, I created myself, my baby, Whittle. She's the quiet dream I always keep in the room. She's there for whenever that offer comes to do what I love - the moment when "helping others make it" and writing intersect. 

Build strong ties.  Help others make it. I believe those two things will benefit you more in business than anything. But I'm no tycoon - and I hope I never am.