I woke up before my alarm today. With faint morning light warmly hinted at through closed eyelids and still in that drowsy, relaxed process of awakening, I slowly became aware of a thought running through my consciousness. A thought fully articulated in one continually looping, complete sentence:

I can change my life.

It’s like I was hearing someone else saying it, except it was also kind of me. You know how dreams can be so strange and sometimes a person will somehow be two people at the same time. Or you’re talking to someone in one place but then as the dream moves on, you realize that this place is also some other place. Or maybe it became some other place but the transition happened without you noticing, except that it didn’t really change, because it’s still that other place, too. I love how dreams occur in a world governed by quantum physics, LOL.

Now, if I were living in the Old Testament, hearing a voice like this would probably mean that God was speaking to me and I was about to become a prophet. However, as I’m living in 21st-century Milwaukee, a more likely scenario is that I was halfway between wakefulness and sleep and somehow thinking I was conscious but not actually there yet.

Here’s something interesting, though. About twenty minutes later, as I was drinking my first cup of coffee, checking the weather forecast, and playing Wordle (😄), that sentence kept popping into my head.

I can change my life.

And then the whole time I was in the shower, that recurring refrain switched over to sort of a call-and-response thing.

You can change your life.

I can change my life.

And then a whole series of calls/responses in which different words were emphasized.

YOU can change your life. I can change my life.

You CAN change your life. I CAN change my life.

You can CHANGE your life. I can CHANGE my life.

You can change YOUR life. I can change MY life.

You can change your LIFE. I can change my LIFE.

Okay, this was starting to be a little weird. Usually my shower time is spent planning out various things I’m going to do that day, so I’m not exactly sure why all of a sudden this morning I’d be thinking about how I can change my life. I’m actually pretty happy with how my life is, thank you very much.

But, upon reflection, I suppose my life is not ideal. (Whose is?) And maybe it would be better if a few things were different. So I’m going to work on improving those areas.

Because apparently I can change my life!

And I’m guessing that you can, too 😄