Do you ever stop to think about your life? I do, all the time.

If you do, how do you think about it? Do you focus on the good things, the things you wouldn’t change? Do you plan ahead to try and see what your life could be and how it is that you could get there? Do you pick it apart and find all of the bad things and then realise that it’s not as easy as picking the pips out of a lemon and that you’re actually going to have to get more than your fingertips wet if you want to fix them?

(That wasn’t supposed to be a life/lemons reference, I just like lemons and getting the pips out can be annoying but a necessary thing to properly enjoy the lemon)

I’ve been trying to look at my life as a whole, which in this case means looking at the individual parts then placing them together to form my life in an abstract way and assessing how well it is. Taking its temperature, checking its reflexes, all of the usual tests. I tried to think of the individual parts as large areas and broke them down to: home life, work life, personal life (which is entirely different from home, it refers to who you are as an individual, by yourself, just you, alone) and the other part being health, meaning the parts that you can tangibly measure to some degree of accuracy, whether physical or mental.

When I put them all back together I realised that they don’t measure up to a whole lot. I’ve placed a metaphorical marker on a scale of 1-10 of where my life currently sits and I feel nonplussed to say that it’s sitting at a 3, maybe a 3.5 if i’m being optimistic, which I’m not exactly known for being. There are little things that I do that make me feel better, like writing this blog, and even then I have to remind myself to make time for it but I’m glad that I do. I’d like to make a point of taking steps in each area of my life to try and improve it as a whole by actively working towards them so that I can hopefully move that metaphorical marker to a 4 one day, or if i’m being wild an dreaming big, a 5.

I’m not saying that I’m going to make a list and once I tick each item off I can move the marker half a point in the positive. I’m not naive enough to think that that’s all it’s going to take but it’s a good starting point. Just like a 3 isn’t great but it’s a starting point, now I have somewhere to move forwards from and somewhere to look back on once I’ve made progress. Instead of just sitting here at a 3 like, cool, this is my life. I will anticipate setbacks and things not going to plan while trying to keep in mind that any progress is good progress, you just have to keep at it.

I wish this post was like a pensieve for thoughts and I could take all of them and put them in these words for me to revisit later because my head feels so heavy right now. I will revisit this topic and perhaps even list some of the things in each area that I’m going to actively work towards, there will be a follow up, this is just a starting point.

Lizzie X