needing a change? or just wanting a little control.

Every once in awhile (every couple months?) I feel the urge to change something in my life.  Usually this is manifested in a deep room cleaning and re-arrangement.  I literally move the furniture and find new places for stuff.  If you know me well you may have noticed this about me.  It's not always furniture, though, and right now I quite like how my room is set up.  It's like I get this urge to change something in my life.  I used to wonder about this, because although I've lived a life of constant moves and changes I have never been that big a fan of change.  So why do I get the urge to inflict change on myself?  I don't think it's been me, in any way, trying to somehow better myself so that I would deal with change better -- you know, some kind of virtuous exercise -- no.  I think it's me feeling like my life is out of control and needed to somehow reel it in and control it.  I can't change other people.  I can't change certain circumstances.  Other ones would be stupid to change until the timing is right.  I can take control of my home environment -- how it's decorated and arranged and I can take control of myself, and there are probably a few other things I can choose to control.  These are what I subconsciously focus on when I feel out of control.  I clean and rearrange my room or I do something to alter myself (usually my hair... sometimes me choosing to wear makeup/be a little more high maintenance.)
Last Fall I chose to henna my hair and probably have re-arranged my room a few times since then.  Today I chose to cut my hair.  Not just a trim.  Maybe like 6 inches.  Something totally noticeable.  It's still a straight cut, but it's shorter, less heavy, more manageable, less hot.  It instantly put me in a better mood.  I haven't truly cut my hair for a couple years.  I have trimmed it an inch or two every once in a great while but I'm not much for hair cuts.  I tend to like how I look with my hair long.  And I don't budget for haircuts.  I do them myself.

So friends, behold:

stepping, leaping, flying

Life is a very step by step process.  Sometimes I dislike process or wish it could be less involved, simpler, something.  I'm thinking of many things here.  I'm thinking of relationships and how I wish, sometimes, that they could progress more quickly.  I'm thinking of my broken kiln and the steps I have to take to repair it.  I'm thinking of my job.  I'm thinking of how I need to get from what I'm doing in life to what I want to be doing, from where I am to where I want to be.

It seems there isn't one path that a person must follow in life, but many.  In fact, it's more like a vast field with no paths, and each must cut their own.  I feel very bewildered as a traveler, holding my machete for cutting a path through the brush (ok, so, it's more brush than field.  field is too easy), not sure what direction the path should go.  And should it be straight, winding... will going towards this tree or that bush somehow effect my life in a drastic way that I don't want or do?  As I look frantically at the brush that seems so daunting and the large sharp blade in my hand I wonder how so many people before me have found paths to cut and have been happy with those choices.  I try and find people I know on the various paths they have made through the brush, hoping maybe we can cut a path together, but I mostly see faces unknown to me.  So much is unknown.  I sit on the ground, take my machete, and whittle away at a stick.  I rearrange rocks on the ground.  I think of my childhood partially spent in a village where I would sit on the ground playing with rocks and sticks and sand.  I'm still that same child, just a little older and now having to make her own path.  I don't know if I like this thing called growing up.  I grab my knees with my hands and rock for awhile, tears streaming down my face.

This is how I felt today.  So many unknowns, so many things that I'm just not satisfied with right now.  I need to continue my path, but I have a feeling it's about to make some interesting turns and I'm not sure I'm ready to cut those.  Sometimes I wish someone would come along, take my hand, and say, "This way!  Let's go this way!".

...

I'm falling apart.  Like my kiln.  Like my life.  I feel so lost.