“Same as it ever was.”

This phrase rings through my head everyday, but never as loudly as on a Monday.  Another week, another forty hours of being tethered to a desk. Trying to write on the side, plug away as I work on my goal to be an independent, self-publishing writer who wants to help others do the same. Keeping the thought list flowing. Maintaining a to-do list, adding new visions, ideas, elements of Tony Robbins or inspiration from online TED Talks to fortify my day. Bulldozing concerns over possible revenue flow as I plot a course toward a freelance future. It’s coming. It’s all coming – cooking away in my mind as I tick off another task to get me closer and closer to the goal of self publishing. I’m getting there – hoping the book I’m publishing later this month is good, but ready to learn from my mistakes. (If there are any. Oh please, let there be very few mistakes!)

On Mondays, as I deal with an aggravating email from someone who wants me to go over the tedious work of someone else, it takes a lot of zen contemplation to keep afloat. Negative thoughts arise and stir the waters, tossing and turning me in the tidal wave of life. Letting the water push me back and forth, back and forth, creating fear and exhaustion as I avoid taking the primal route of swimming directly to the shoreline – another online job website – another recruiter who offers hope of another job with a higher paycheck, but really tempting me with the same boring, tethered slave labor that will barely pay me enough to store away money for the future. Because you know what? I spend what little money I earn – because I want to live…NOW.

No more safe way. If a riptide comes, I won’t panic and swim to the mirage of a safe coastline. Doing so will tangle me in the riptide, pull me down, drown me into another day of “same as it ever was”. It has become a wasteful, unhappy life in which I must currently endure a little longer as I swim parallel along the shore until I’m free from the pull.  I’m giving that a year until I’m afloat and breathing free.

I guess you can call this a Monday meditation, a call to arms against a sea of self doubt. Another Monday of returning to employment I’ve sustained – the end result of another dream I had when I was in college – a dream that faded out a long time ago.  As decades rolled by, and days folded into mindless, unconsciously doing, I awoke to my “Well, how did I get here?” moment. It doesn’t always happen once in your life. It can start as a little seedling of a voice that grows louder and louder with each moment of unhappiness.

“This is not my beautiful house….”

I’m living out these days in the last embers of a desire I had when I was 19 years old. I no longer want this. I want something else – and am working toward this new mindset – this new life.

“Letting the days go by, letting the water hold me down.”

Time to swim.