(R)evolution

by Vixen Incognola

This post is part of a guest series.  For more information, see here.

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Click the pic to get to Vix. 😉

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I am the writer of my story- My Life’s Story – and my choices in life often leave me in full editing mode.

I am constantly changing my mind, constantly changing my wants, but you know what?!  That is okay, because life is not set in stone; if we do not like it, we have full authority to change it.

And trust, that in my editing mode, I have changed a lot.

Jobs, Lawd… I have been all over the map with jobs:  retail, photography, emergency medicine, dispatching, engineering….

It wasn’t until my late 20s that I decided to actually start a career, and that was done more out of concern for my daughter than to please any part of myself.  While I am more grounded in routine than I would like to admit, it does present a comfort and “calm” my need for change in a lot of aspects of my life.  Work for example, I dislike the “cube” life, but I have embraced it.  It provides the financial support that I need for my daughter and the flexibility I need for her as well.  With that, it alleviates the need to change homes, enabling her to stay at the same school.  I want that for her.  As exciting as change is, new people and places… it presents a lot of issues for a child growing up (well it did for me), and I do not want that for her.

I am a fast learner and a great multi-tasker; things tend to easily bore me.

This is probably why monogamous relationships are so hard for me.

This is where change has a negative impact on my life.  I like change and I like it often and my guys usually don’t change as fast as I do, and if the guy can change with me… I love big and hard.  If I do let someone “in” it is hard for me to change that. There is not one past lover or mate that I have that would not take me back.  (I know that sounds SO cocky of me, but it is true.)  I do not change the way I see them; they may have tarnished portions of themselves in my eyes, but I look past all that, so for me it is hard to “change” the way I act towards them, to have them “removed” from my life.  My love does not change.  It may evolve, it may grow, it may not be as strong, but I have yet to find where it has ever died for someone or something.

Greatest example, Lopez.

I can’t “change” my life to one that Lopez doesn’t exist in.

Sigh.

I once told him that I feel like he and I are constantly growing yet our ankles are chained down so we haven’t really “moved”.

I need change.
I need it often.

For me, change is excitement, new beginnings, it’s exhilarating. I think it is referred to correctly as the “winds of change” because you cannot hold on to change.  For as good as it makes me feel, it soon becomes an everyday.  I immediately picture Leonardo DiCaprio leaning off the tip of the Titanic screaming, “I’m the King of the World!”

I get a similar feeling when it comes to shedding something old and embarking on something new.

Just as Socrates said, “Change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.”  That man was brilliant, maybe he could come in and do some cleanup for me behind my change.

I have been told I have a gypsy spirit many times in my life and have even been told I was a Romany Gypsy in a past life.  I take that to mean I am a very free-spirited person and embrace change.  A change of scenery, jobs, abodes… I do believe this.  I think the most of my change comes when I cannot control something.  I wig out in my own way, which usually ends up with me taking out my big red felt pen and marking up a chapter in my life, maybe cutting something out, divorce, moving (well I don’t do this anymore), may be changing my appearance, a new tattoo even.

With that said, there is a pretty significant amount of change that I do not have ANY control over.  The ones that are subtle, the ones you don’t notice until you look around and don’t recognize some things. It’s like a colleague came upon my story and did minor edits that I didn’t know about.  These edits can be opportunities that came about or new people that came into my life, or maybe they came as failures, things I didn’t succeed at, things that I wasn’t ready for.

Which kind of brings me to the whole concept of “people changing”, I do not believe people change.  I believe our core remains a constant throughout our lives.  Experiences guide us, making us react differently, maybe even make us see things differently, but we as people do not change. I believe our fears do not change, if we are afraid to act – that goes for acting on anything.

Then I think, do I ever really change?

Me?  Do I Change?

That is hard for me to answer.

While I think I have evolved, I don’t think I have changed.

I think I have changed the way I react, respond, interpret, digest…. To people, experiences, etc.  BUT I am still the same me.  The same vulnerable, giving, sex loving, caring, sucker for good music, dancing in the streets me.

The people that get to see and experience those levels of me… that has changed.

People have come and gone, their views/attitudes of me may have changed, things have changed around me and I acknowledge that has an effect on me, but I guess I see it as evolution.

Then again I guess evolution is a form of change itself.