Tangles

[sarahmichigan]

Sometimes, you don't have one discrete area of your life where there's a problem. Sometimes, you have multiple issues all tangled up with one another, and the frustration from one problem feeds into another issue in your life, until you feel that all your troubles are like a bunch of necklaces that were carelessly tossed into a drawer, and now they're all hopelessly tangled.

When you have that tangle of necklaces, sometimes it's hard to know where to start. You spend minutes, hours, looking at the messy heap, trying to figure out which end to pull. You worry that if you pull the wrong one, you'll make the knots worse. Eventually, though, you just need to pick one end and start pulling and untangling. If you pull the wrong one and make it messier, so what? You keep going, and it may take a little longer than if you'd chosen the "right" end to start with. Or you decide that's not working and you switch to a different end and see if tackling that works any better.

When life is messy, sometimes it's draining to contemplate starting to fix things. But if you just move instead of stalling, you WILL feel better, and things will improve. Maybe not as quickly as you'd like. Maybe something will get broken or ripped along the way. Maybe the end result won't be quite what you'd planned. But even doing a couple false starts before you find the most suitable way is better than wallowing in stagnation, frustration, and self-recrimination.

And, there's no shame in asking someone else to help you figure out how to start the untangling process, either.

Comments

[ladyteal.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

I needed that.

[flyinglemurs.livejournal.com]

Hah good analogy. That necklace thing..with actual necklaces happens to me all the time. My trouble is try to be patient for a bit then just start hanging and one breaks and little pieces fly all over and then just when you thought you found them all months later you find more beads under the dresser. No doubt that would work for the analogy somehow too.

Btw...ladyteal that's a lovely icon.

[sarahmichigan.livejournal.com]

I think that would fit into the analogy just fine, actually.