your best is enough

long hours. dim lights. the gurgle of brewing coffee. bleary eyes, rereading blinking words on a glowing screen.

so often it's late. so often we sit there thinking:

not enough
not enough.

rubbing our eyes, looking at our to-do lists:

"half done.
half done and it's midnight."

listen: take a deep breath. stop.

what are you doing? don't just glaze over that question - seriously. read it and let it sink in.

what are you doing? 

yes. yes, sometimes we have to be up late, burning the midnight oil, torching our tired eyes with the light of a screen; sometimes the long days and nights that seem to stretch to infinity are necessary.

but not every night.

your gift, your passion, your art - it shouldn't be a lycanthropic beast that morphs with the howling moon to eat you alive, pulling you apart at the seams;

sending your feathers scattering,
sca  t   t  e    r      i    n    g 

you aren't a machine, sweet soul,
mmm no. you don't have to live like this.

you don't have to look at the lists
all the benchmarks you keep making for yourself
goalposts that seem to scream: "run faster - run harder"

while they take another step back, staying just
out of your reach.

you don't have to run. you don't have to keep grasping
at ghosts

not because you shouldn't work hard, you shouldn't chase your dreams
but because you are chasing them,
because you are working hard

and your best is enough -  your ebbing, flowing best, that changes from day to day like the roaring, round ocean - it's completely and fully enough.

on the days when we work hard, mm good.
on the days when we rest, mm good.

because your best, no matter what that looks like from one day to the next:
it is enough. 

oh, radiant soul, it is enough, i promise you.
you don't have to push yourself to the point of breaking.
a broken you is not a creative you.
an exhausted you is not an inspired you.

stop muscling through the day - stop pushing and shoving yourself, stop moving that goal post just a
little     farther                                              away.

just embrace your best today,
and fully accept that it is

enough.

____________________

i wish you the most inspired and beautiful week, rad soul. this poem is a messy little pile of what i swept up off my brain during my end of week cleaning. needed to clean my head up for the coming week. i was thinking a lot about burn out yesterday because i was FEELIN it, which only raised a big question for me:

isn't the main reason we get burnt out because we falsely believe that our best is not enough?

and it's such a lie too, because if we're giving something our best, that's all we can do - and that is always enough. 

stay stoked!

kate

oh, p.s. ......there's a brand new trailer out for my book Worlds Beneath, and i would LOVE to know what you think of it!! here's a link.