I'm New

I like to come up with little mottos and symbols and motifs all the time to cheer myself on and encourage myself. I find that they really help me to steer myself in the right direction, even if they're very small and very meaningless things. I guess part of it is just the act of focusing on something in itself, but it also feels special to have something you made up for yourself at a specific kind of time or to combat a particular obstacle. It's a bit like having a memento from a friend that you can always look at when you need a boost.

My new little motto for now is simply, "I'm new".

A problem I have sometimes is that I can dwell too much on things. Sometimes when I try to go to sleep I find myself unable to stop myself from cycling through a thousand worries about the stupidest things. Sometimes I can still get bothered by memories I have from being a little kid and making some kind of a mistake or having something go wrong, and whilst I know what I'm thinking about really isn't important or worth worrying about, it can be easy to get stuck there. So I thought up "I'm new" to be something I could whisper to myself if I can't pull myself out of those types of memories or thoughts. Because it's all okay if I'm new. A new person separated from those things. Like the first page of a shiny new sketchbook.

I'm not sure exactly why it works for me, but it does. It's my chant for right now. I'm new, I'm new, I'm new. Ready to be clean and fresh like a springtime meadow full of dewdrops. A sequence of emerging flower buds. The first tentative chirps at sunrise. Something like that.