Exhale and Inhale

I was going to go for a walk, but a cat jumped on my lap and now I am stuck here for the foreseeable future. It’s ok, though. I really should be inside working anyway. It’s just that it’s 60 degrees and sunny and spring is finally here in earnest. It also coincides with a sort of exhale for me in a lot of areas of my life. The book is in the last stages, a significant volunteer role is starting to wind down, and we’re finally getting some movement on some house projects that we’ve been trying to get done for a while.

That last one, the sense of movement, is a huge source of relief. We’ve had a few projects that have needed to get done for a few years, but where we live, it’s so so hard to get a good contractor for a small project. There are a lot of people and a lot of new houses being built and I 100% understand why redo-ing our old powder room might not be that appealing. But it’s been a real pain in the butt.

I hate feeling stuck. I don’t mind not starting something, and I definitely love being done with something, but being in the middle, stalled, drives me up the wall. I end up just banging and banging at it until something gives. The question is, was the forward motion because I was pushing for it, or would things have moved anyway?

I’m sure you all know the feeling. You know, when you’re stuck in traffic, and you’d rather take a different, longer route, as long as it meant you were still moving? It doesn’t matter to me if I’m the cause of the movement, as long as I get somewhere and feel like I did something.

But these days, I’m trying to learn how to wait and see if the movement happens without all the storm and stress. There are definitely times when my intervention is needed, but let’s be honest - there are a lot of situations that are only made worse by a short angry lady getting involved. As for the contractor issue, the solution was in front of me all the time. Literally - I noticed their office one day when driving down our hill. They’d been there for years and it had never occurred me to look them up. But when I did, the reviews were wonderful, the price was right, and most of all, they got us moving forward.

When my kids went to school, I worried that I would become lazy, stagnant with all my free time. I mentioned that to a friend who laughed. “People like you don’t do that.” I didn’t trust myself enough then to believe her, but she was right.

Because after this exhale, I’ll be ready for the next round of activity. Even as I’m releasing one book, I can feel my frustration starting to build over the next one. The new book coming out basically wrote itself, but my next project is stalled. I’m stuck and I want movement. But maybe after doing a few times, I’m starting to be smart enough to know that it’ll come. I’ll get through the book launch and the volunteer stuff and then I’ll let myself get really, really bored for a week. And the end, all of that energy that I could have spent banging my head against the keyboard will come out in a torrent.

I would like to believe that, but let’s be honest, I’m not that wise yet. For now, I’ll enjoy the feeling of going with the flow, but I make no promises for the future.