day 16 blog 17 flower child

i swear i have so much on my mind right now i can't decide what to write about...so this will truly be a "free association" if ever my writing style embodies that idea (check out my labels and i'm pretty sure i put that for most of my posts)...mainly i'm just really tired. should be in bed. but when my mind is racing and i want to be writing (or recently, blogging) i can't slow down my mind to sleep so i just get anxious or feel like i need to make lists of the ideas or things i should or want to do...

i'm rambling more than usual...feel like i drank too much caffeine only i actually had none today...am even trying to cut back on sugar...so one topic i hope to blog about soon is my health...i've started exercising (which is HUGE for me...never been a consistent or big part of my life). regularly. aerobically. so i feel something. and in the two weeks i've been doing this i've felt better. physically. emotionally. maybe even less tired. but that is a stretch. my first health intervention should be to get more sleep. next would be nutrition. overall i eat well but there are several food items i could really cut out. most of them are sugary.

oh yeah, the photo and blog title are "flower child"...that is where my free association began...i was raised in a conservative (religious and political) community with a lot of emphasis on appearances, material possessions, money, "success" etc. and i always felt misunderstood and like i didn't fit in. then in college one of my psychology professors made an off hand remark like "you really are a lost flower child at heart" and some time after that i started "finding" myself...making friends with more "hippy" types...i could do another blog on what i mean by that...my husband immediately thinks of drugs, but that isn't what i mean...heck, one of my friends (also one of my favorite blogs that i follow) has a blog called wannabehippie...i'll do a post on her one of these days...

but for now i wanted to go back to the flower child idea. free spirit. not caring what people think. living for higher ideals. searching for meaning. making a difference in the world. living with less. relishing in simple pleasures. getting in touch with the earth. going outside a lot (my exercising, by the way, has been taking long brisk walks, deep breathing and spurts of aerobic "jogging"). sun on my face. going to the beach (tomorrow will be the third day in the row...and i mean we have been going ALL day)...heck, we named our daughter "sea" and our son "story"...i have so many stories to tell of our life by the sea...i could have made my blog title something related to those two concepts only i started this blog before story was born. if we had had another girl we were going to name her elivia with the nickname "live"...not "liv" but the idea of living...

so i'm a flower child at heart. my daughter appears to be, too...i think we kinda look like one another in this photo. i can relate with her on a lot and am afraid to relate with her too much. afraid to project my hopes and create her in a way that doesn't allow her to truly be who she is. because i felt like the community i grew up in didn't allow me to be myself. didn't understand me. didn't encourage me to be different.

so my identity development and psychology background and over-analysis of life and my thesis on self-concept, meaning in life, integrity, happiness, life satisfaction, etc. are all topics for a future post...

for now i just want to "be" in more moments with my family...literally pick daisies together and metaphorically skip through tulips (or literally if you have some...)...because my children are growing up so fast...