"The more important a call or action to our soul’s evolution, the more resistance we will feel towards pursuing it.”
Steven Pressfield
Fuck, I feel that.
I think I have always been pretty good at getting shit accomplished. I have always been a doer. Busy. Engaged. Not a procrastinator at all. I just handled shit and got it done. But the older I get, the less I am like that. I have things that need attending to that I have allowed to languish for months. Want an example because you don’t believe me? Ok, here are three:
My book. I have a manuscript I need to edit and then publish. It has been in this state for well over a year.
My potting table is a fucking disaster and has been this way for months.
Meditation. I used to have this amazing practice. Then I took back the ex and ever since then, I have struggled. I am doing better. I have meditated every day in 2025, save one, and it feels like I am getting back on track, but I can tell you that it has not been easy to get to this level of commitment and willingness.
To be clear, there are more. And I can’t remember a time in my life where there were so many things in a state of disrepair, inattention and languishment (I know that isn’t a word but it fits here so I am making it a word...).
I am not sure what is going on with me. I wonder if my mental faculties are failing and I just can’t stay on top of it all. I wonder if I have been hyper productive to a fault for all these years, and now am doing other work that results in my inattention to things that I used to attend to better. Do I just not care after a life time of over caring about everything and everyone? Have I just burned myself out?
I really do not know. Like everything else in this life, it is likely a combination of good, bad and indifferent. I am just so tired of the grind. My heart is not in it and I would rather wander around in the woods, write shit down (this doesn’t help explain the book. I think the book is so personal and I am afraid to put it out there so I procrastinate), read, talk to friends, contemplate the meaning of life...instead of begrudgingly work/parent and do all the shit life requires me to do that I just don't care about anymore.
I do feel that my soul is being asked to evolve. I do feel like I am being asked to level up and I have to own that I feel like I lack the energy and drive to get there. I feel like the tasks of daily living, parenting, working and pet owning take up so much time, there just isn’t time for anything else. Really. Or perhaps there is time but I am too tired once I get there because of all the other shit I have had to clear before I have the time to evolve.
So I am currently mired in the resistance.
And there isn’t much to be done about it except accept it. This is where I am. I know I am being called to level up. To move forward. To press on. But I feel so trapped and locked into my daily grind there hardly feels like there is time for anything else. I find myself longing for simpler times. Times where I am not a parent. I do not have to work. Time when I can just live life in its most basic form and have that be my only job. I know that if I ever achieve that life, I will miss the one I am currently living. The one with all the excitement and travel and friends and kids and meaningful work. I know that I will miss this life, so why do I feel so compelled to leave this one behind when I know that it is a great life and I am lucky to have it?
Perhaps it is just aging. Perhaps it is mental decline. Perhaps though it is my soul’s evolution and I am just resisting it?
I am trying very hard to keep my palms open in this life. To take what comes and not grasp. To allow what comes to me, to flow in and to not spend my time recklessly by attempting to keep things in my life that are not really meant to stay or pushing away things in my life that are required for my growth. I am trying, every single day, to just wake up, palms outstretched and open and allow what is supposed to land, to land and stay as long as it likes. Then when it leaves, to just bless it away and wait for the next thing to land. It isn’t easy but it is the best use of myself I can find in today’s world.
I am resisting. I can feel it and it is exhausting me. But I don’t know how else to do this life. I am working on surrendering but that too seems to be elusive and hard won.
I have to admit, that on mornings like this, I just want to go back to bed, to curl up next to someone warm and safe and not think about all this shit all the time. Sometimes I really get tired having to do all the things alone and that the weight of this life rests solely upon my shoulders. But I also know that I am the one standing in my way regarding partnership and connection and intimacy. I am not sure what I fear more, my soul’s evolution requiring me to participate in an intimate connection or my soul’s evolution requiring that it does not. I really feel quite scared of either if I am honest.
I think I thought that my soul’s evolution would find a home in another. I think I thought that I would have a partner, someone upon which to rely. Someone who would show up for me and add to my life. So far my partner choices have only drained me and left me feeling like a spinning top that rarely makes any forward progress. I am not blaming the men I have chosen to partner with...I picked them. I am the one that committed to those particular shitshows. It was me. I totally understand that I have been the problem. I am just not sure how to fix it, or me. And it terrifies me that my work may be to have to continue seeking this elusive and hard to find man that with every passing day feels like he is just a figment of my overactive imagination. It is all folly because I am not partnerable (also not a word according to my autocorrect, but autocorrect can just fuck off).
So I am leading a resistance to my own growth and leveling up. Which is dumb. And I am not a stupid person. Hard headed. Stubborn. Dramatic. Over achieving. Bold. Brash. Unflinching. But I am not stupid.
So what gives?
I think at the base of it, I am afraid. Afraid that real connection shall remain an off limits thing for me. Afraid that I will spend the rest of my days alone, and equally afraid that I won’t. That delicate balance between living my life and sharing my life always seems so out of reach for me so I continue to retreat into and away from intimacy because that is what I have always done.
My soul’s evolution is asking something else from me and I feel stymied and stayed because I really do not know how to do it differently. So I struggle. And the life is being lived within this struggle. Which is likely why I am so tired all the damn time and feel so stuck.
I have the tool of surrender. I know how to use it and so I begin on this day to surrender to the powers that be, to realize resistance is futile. To surrender once more to what comes and what goes. To understand that there are lessons in all that I do and in what I don’t do. I need only to stop my incessant thinking and fighting what is and just allow myself to be in this place and stop judging it to be inadequate, false or untimely. I am where I am, doing what I am doing, and it is all part of the soul's evolution. Even the resistance. There is magic in the work you are avoiding...in fact, the longer I live, the more sure I am that is where they keep the magic always. It shall always and forever reside in the place I am least likely and willing to seek it.
Again...still.
Dammit.
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