Slippery and messy

Know that feeling when you are elbow-deep in paint and glue, halfway down the path of a project, able to see where you will end up and glorying in the slippery delicious mess of it?  Remember back to kindergarten when you fingerpainted with gusto, smearing the paper and the desk and your shirt and your eyebrows.  Or maybe it's when you are cooking, covered in flour and butter, batter flying everywhere, salivating in anticipation of the savory morsel you are preparing.  If you can't conjure up this feeling of visceral revelry I am describing, then stop what you are doing and go get some paint or go to the kitchen or go get some mud, and immediately start messily and wildly making something.  It's a deeply satisfying, profoundly grounding feeling to be slippery and messy and creative.  And being creative often is a slippery thing, both literally and metaphorically, and is also often messy in both senses. 

And so is life.  My mom said this to me in a phone call today as I was lamenting the ongoing uncertainty in some key areas of my life right now.  I am a person of action.  I like to examine my choices, make a decision, and take action.  Immediately.  And decisively.  And actively.  I do not like to explore each and every scenario and possibility ad nauseum without seeing a clear cut best choice.  And right now, there are uncertainties and possibilities and many many choices in front of me, without enough information to be able to make a decision.  And I. Don't. Like. It.

Life is slippery and messy.  We think we have things under control, and life suddenly throws a giant bucket of slimy green goo on us and off we go, slip-sliding off of our carefully plotted course, sticky and messy and out-of-control.

I don't mind creative mess.  In fact, I relish it.  I do mind life mess.  In fact, I {the opposite of relish} it.  And I've written before about how I wish I could learn to embrace life mess the same way I embrace creative mess.  Perhaps that's why my life continues to feel like a giant slide of green goo:  life is giving me another opportunity to embrace the messy and slippery ride.

{Sigh}

This is where I'm supposed to offer an insight or a lighthearted ironic observation or a pithy comment.

I don't have any.  Sometimes blogs, and life, are slippery and messy.