change

Any season can be the beginning of change. Autumn seems especially poignant as the leaves intensify in their fiery colours and one seems to feel the urge to "rage against the dying of the light."

I've mentioned that I have felt a shifting in my life. It's troublesome. It leaves me feeling lonely, unsettled, unmoored. I feel the need to take stock: unfinished business, unfinished projects, goals yet to meet. I feel the need to sift through my "stuff", literally and metaphoretically, to discard what I no longer need, to organize what I intend to take with me as my life moves forward. And I feel the need to re-focus, to refine my goals and make plans.

In other places, I mentioned that I've made some decisions. I've yet to make others. Balance is such a difficult place to find. Is it on a map somewhere?

I got a birthday card from a dear friend which helped to lift me from a potential slide into serious depression. I was in danger of believing my own bad press (beware of the rantings of your ego!). I was in danger of believing that unless I had achieved certain kinds of material wealth, status, physical exploits, sign posts in my career, I had failed. However, this birthday card was still sitting up on my dresser. My birthday was a whole month ago.

First, I admired the coincidence that several birthday cards all seemed to be of the same colour, a soft green which matched the decor of my bedroom. I wondered if my family and friends had been a particularly green mood when they bought my birthday cards or if thinking of me made them think of green?

Okay, no more dithering. Here's what the card said:

If you believe
that each of us
was designed by God
for a specific reason,
then you know
there's no such thing
as an ordinary person.
So happy birthday, extraordinary person.
Don't ever forget how truly unique,
how essential, how important
you are.
I know I won't.

The other thing that came into my mind then was the dictum: write what you know.
Well, writing what I know might be rather ugly, I thought. I've met some pretty 'interesting' people lately and they might not appreciate what I write about them! Ah, and then I remembered that I also learned a lot about myself in meeting these people. And whom do I know better than the person I see in the mirror each day. I have no idea really what motivates those people I've met recently, some of whom pissed me off! But I know a little bit about what motivates me, sigh.

So, for what it's worth, I offer you here a sort-of running chronicle of my attempts (again!) to get my life on track and to reach for some of the things that get me jazzed up about life. It might be a rough ride, but it is what it is. And as my running pals would say, it's all good.

random relatedness:

Annie Dillard's official website, author of The Writing Life amongst much more

Biology Unmoored, ethnographic research on a worldview that is not reliant on biophysiological reproduction

Browze Inside...The Writing Life, by Annie Dillard

Coming Unmoored -- redesigning a life in a tiny floating home

The Writing Life II, a blog about writing

Unmoored -- info on the groove-, later death-metal band from Sweden