Deep (ish) thoughts.

sub·stance
def.
the most important or essential part of something; the real or essential meaning.
synonyms:meaningfulness,significance, importance, import,validity, foundation.

I am having a deep thought. I think. Or a random rambling. Maybe.
Hear me out?

Substance.

That word has been rattling around in my head for a while. Does that ever happen to you?
A word just gets stuck in there and it means...something. But what? Sometimes you don't know until...well, until you do.

Substance is what I seek. Living a substantial life. Not monetary substance, or material substance. I am a substance seeking missile.
Always have been.

The cool thing about having substance is you don't have to be an angel to have substance, you don't have to go to church, you don't have to believe THIS or THAT.
You don't have to DO anything but live your life unapologetically and genuinely. Honestly and kindly. Even snarkily, hell, snarky can be substantial too. But judging others, creating negativity, and worrying more than you should, those are substance suckers.

I have spent the majority of my life worrying. Have you? Now, at nearly forty years old, the substance that was inside always shooting for something better, truer, more substantial...has happened.

I can't imagine for one second living without the shop and all of the amazing substantial people that have come along with it. And now that the lifelong dream of matching what was always inside to a tangible outside has come true...my biggest worry is that something bad will happen.

That's my truth.

Unfounded worry, but that waiting for the other shoe to drop is a hard habit to break.

Bad things happen to all of us, no matter what form they may take. Trips to the doctor, a phone call in the middle of the night, even a refrigerator that stops working when you have no money to fix it. (Did you know you can live sans refrigeration for six months? Real talk. It happened to me...when I had a "real job").

What I am learning, and really, what the shop was built on, is that a whole pile of bad stuff can turn into something good. The same wake up calls can turn your life into something better when you realize that: living through crappy stuff? And making life better after? That's what substance is. Embracing your struggles, being proud of what you have endured. And accomplished in spite of all. Where there once was bad stuff, there is now substance. Understanding. Because to really live, to really SEE others, you had to go through it.

I know, thanks for the late breaking news. None of this is mind blowing. You already know all of this. But I figured out my rattling around in my head word.

And maybe that worry changes nothing, but substance can change everything.

And that feels pretty dang good.