Wrinkles

Well, hello there once again!

It is time for yet another Monday of the calendar of 2022 as we go through this fourth month of April inching closer to the Easter holiday and what will hopefully mean some more sunshine and Spring-like weather.

As I sit here writing these words to you, I’m currently looking through a singular window watching the trees blow as Mother Nature’s wind harshly howls choruses of high-pitched whistles of sound.

Send the sunshine.

Please.

PRETTY PLEASE with a cherry on top?

We’ll reconvene next week to see how she does with that request.

Anyhoo, let us get on to the this week’s post.

Grab your blanket, umbrella, sun shades–basically any accessory possible for all weather types because you never know what you are going to get these days.

For the readers who are detail oriented, I’m sure you already saw the title of this week’s post.

And if you didn’t…well then, shame on you.

KIDDING!

You can either scroll up to read it now or scroll on to read it in the next 2 seconds.

Get I get a drum roll please?!

::DRUM ROLL::

This week’s post is about…wrinkles.

That’s right.

You read it right.

Wrinkles.

Since I love getting literal with the meaning of words, I looked up the official definition, which I have included below:

Noun

-A small furrow or crease in the skin, especially of the face, as from aging or frowning.

-A temporary slight ridge or furrow on a surface, due to contraction, folding, crushing, or the like.

So, why am I talking about wrinkles? How did this blog post come about?

Well, I am so glad that you asked.

Let’s take a stroll down memory lane…a flashback so to speak…to exactly one week ago…on Monday evening, March 28th around 6:30pm.

I had just finished an approximatr 9 hour day at my part-time job when, out of nowhere, I had a moment of panic when I randomly thought about all of the wrinkles on the shirts in my closet.

I walked to my closet, opened the door, and started pulling out shirt after shirt and lying it on my bed in panic as they kept piling up.

So. Many. Shirts.

So. Many. Wrinkles.

Call me crazy, I know.

I honestly had no idea what possessed me to have this random moment of panic, but it felt very real to me.

Also…secret side note…I’m not very good at ironing.

With that being said, I got out my mini ironing board and typed into the search bar of Google, “How To Iron A Shirt.”

Of course, there were about 1,564,670 videos that came up showing results ranging in length from 1 minute to 5 minutes.

Could ironing a shirt really be that difficult?

I started to watch a video and proceeded with trying to iron the first of what looked like 15 shirts on my bed.

I was not very successful and after only the second shirt, I gave up in a feeling of frustration and defeat as I moved the shirts off their hangers into the dryer where I placed them on the cycle entitled, “dewrinkle.”

So, why am I sharing this story with you?

I share this story with you because as we continue to live out our lives, there are very real moments that we as individuals experience that involve feelings of exhaustion, defeat, panic, and stress over what might seem like the simplest of entities.

But while I felt defeat in the moment after attempting to iron, I also had a moment of clarity.

To me, a shirt that is wrinkled resembles imperfections about ourselves and life that are beautiful pieces who make up who we are.

The perfectly pressed shirt (to me) resembles the societal expectation that everyone must be perfectly crisp and clean 100% of the time which is not a reality.

The shirts with wrinkles in my closet display my true colors as a human who works hard to get through life, tries to make the right choices, and does their best to stand on two feet amongst the constant battles in life that try to knock us down.

Let the wrinkles show.

Embrace the imperfections.

Open the closet door of non perfectly pressed shirts that display your genuine human realness to those around you.

Stop finding yourself in the tide of waters that flow full of society’s expectations.

Go AGAINST the current and embrace YOU.

Wrinkles and all.

Sprinkle sunshine always,

JP!