Tag: future

59. Glimpses of paradise.

I have just read back on a post from a year ago.

I remember that feeling of not being able to control, to contain. Of a tear I couldn’t stop ripping further. The weakest point between us having finally, totally, given way. I read back, and I could hug that woman. I knew then that the rock bottom I was sitting on would probably grow stable. I would learn to put my feet down. To stand, to eventually step forward.

Today there are glimpses of the future I know I want. I don’t know I’ll get it, little is that simple. But I don’t really care. It’s the joy, the heart filling warmth, and it feels so good. Not just because in itself it’s lovely. It is. But it reminds me that settling, just scraping by, not even side by side but vaguely, not really, together, makes you stoop. It diminishes you.

Not continuing with that is hard. It’s a known life, not your best one, that you have and it’s scary to leave it.

But I am reminded that a future of glimpses of paradise is so much more than a past with none.

And in the words of the great Kenny Rogers…

Don’t be afraid to give up the good for the great.

Especially when it’s wasn’t even good.

40. So maybe I need to think big and walk toward it.

I have a busy week, I do lots of things, see lots of people, lots of things get ticked off the list. And then there’s someone else to tell.

It’s the telling that is hard.

So often I’ve got myself to the stage where I’m feeling strong and capable. Sense of humour in full flow – always a sign that I’m feeling a bit more like me. I am seeing things in the future. Not exactly the future itself but I can see certain things happening in it. Good things, interesting thing. Certainly I’m not so scared of it. Or more specifically, I’m not so scared of my place in it. Because that can sometimes be the thing that makes me take breath. How do I navigate my way through? What’s it going to look like?

A friend of mine told me that a couple of years ago, for the first time ever, he sat down and wrote a plan. In fact he wrote a five year plan. Small things, the many little doable things filled lots of its spaces. But there were big, important, Life things. About jobs and house and family. And, more importantly, it made him plan for a future he’d been walking towards without really putting down a structure to make it take shape.

I’ve been doing the same thing. I’m used to being a person that works well in a crisis. I think on my feet and I always come up with a solution to a problem. It’s how I get through many situations. It’s certainly getting me through this one. But that isn’t going to give me targets and something to work toward. It’s as if it separates the dreams from the possibilities. If I’m not careful I’ll miss out all the big stuff while busying myself with the achievable.

So maybe I need to think big and walk toward it.

Travel, home, job – these are areas I’ve had thoughts about, even changed some bits of them. But none of those changes have been months in the planning, certainly never a year, and sometimes barely weeks. I react to something and that’s when my actions happen. It’s a hell of a thought that I can choose my action first.

This new life is going to take some getting used to,