Chutes and Ladders

So, I'm confused and not sure where I am on the game board.

 

I enjoy the metaphor and think of life sometimes, especially as of late, as a game of Chutes and Ladders, or Snakes and Ladders in other parts of the world which I hold dear.  Sometimes it's easy to tell what has just happened on your go: you've hit a chute, you've hit a ladder, or you've been skipped and you're staying put.  My bus ride this morning is making me wonder where I am on this go.

 

A really, really hot guy got on the bus this morning.  Tall, lean, coiffed, put together, and smart (he was reading the New Yorker and walked into one of the research buildings).  I found myself only looking at him and the neurons where just firing left and right.  There were the ones that were saying things like, "see, that's how I want to look" or "he probably wouldn't go for you, if he's gay."  And while those are thoughts I've often had before--usually going even further to say things like "if I looked like that, I could have/would get x," where x=a man, happiness, better life, et cetera--it kinda didn't go there today.  I say kinda because I can't deny those thoughts didn't flash at least once, but it was just the once.  Then some new or disused neurons kicked in, reminding myself of the things that I've been doing lately for me, or how I don't know that I've not been someone's bus ride fantasy, or the things that are left to accomplish that will make things all the more sweet because I will have really worked for them.

 

All of this was, of course, going on at once, and I just kept looking at him.  In the not too distant past, seeing someone so hot would make me feel less than I am.  This morning I feel more like a work in progress rather than someone whose growth has been stunted or halted.  I don't know.  

 

I'm sitting here, realizing that I'm coming down from my transcendental high of the guided imagery experience, feeling that I've just been riding the wave and have not been actively doing something to maintain it.  But I think, I think my baseline level of whatever it is, joie de vivre...that baseline has changed?  I thought whilst riding the bus of the fact that I bought a couple of cute tops this week in colors that I often long to wear but shy away from due to past feelings of magenta.  I thought about the fact that I've been wearing fragrance everyday for almost a week, something I once did all of the time and haven't done in years except on 'special' occasions, but something that makes me feel cute.  I've tested two new recipes this week, which hardly ever happens.  And I actually feel rested when I wake up in the morning for the first time in months.

 

Do I still want to look like that guy?  Honestly, yes.  But when I thought about that on the bus this morning, I thought about why I wanted to look like him, and there didn't seem to be any other ulterior motive other than the fact that that is the look that I like and want to achieve for me, just me.  And it didn't seem so far-fetched. 

 

Is that sentiment real and true?  I certainly hope so.