Happy New Year….

Wow.

It is painfully sobering to return to something I professed to love, but allowed to languish for, well….too long. Something I fought for and worked for and sacrificed for but that still came up painfully short in the “Original Plan™”. In all that pain resulting from the pivot from the “Original Plan™”, I forgot one of my primary goals as a planner, the thing I told every past client and every potential client who waited as I built: flexibility.

A plan constructed without some flexibility for the INEVITABLE bends in the road, isn’t much of a plan, because there will ALWAYS be curveballs we do not or cannot see coming at us. But I, like many of us, suffered from some perception challenges: what we can see so clearly for or about others, we cannot see clearly, if at all, for or about ourselves. That said, the curves can teach us. They can clarify and offer new perspectives. Growth and change never happen when we are comfortable and the inextricably linked corollary: we are never really done growing and changing. I mean, if we are done, then we are done {grimace} and I am DEFINITELY NOT DONE.

Somewhere along the way, this idea that I had done enough or paid enough dues, therefore…had taken root in my head, and when it did, my tolerance for change atrophied. I used to be so good at change. I more than embraced it, I initiated it. Quite a bit. What changed? Heh….

Now, I find myself lurching into 2025 on crutches…literally, with zero resolutions. None. Not even the secret little judgmental ones I used to level at myself, but never admitted out loud to anyone else. I used to say I had given up resolutions in favor of revolutions, but I had stopped doing even that. Enter a terrifyingly fast, unforeseen curve that literally dropped me to the floor, as my knee went out from under me. And after a couple of edifying hours in the ER on the morning of the 31st, I was sent home to sit, to elevate, to ice and generally be still.

Ummmmm….now? You need me to be still, NOW?!? I have young children. I have elderly parents. I have family in town. I have a job. It’s New Year’s Eve day.

Yep. NOW. You didn’t hear “now” you didn’t heed “Now.” So, you are presented with: “NOW.”

But…but….but….now is inconvenient. Newsflash: it is never convenient. And the truth is, what I was really saying to myself was that I am being inconvenient. I am being a “waste of time.” Whoa. Is that really a message from which goodness flows? From which growth or clarity occur? Yeah, not so much. I had even written about almost this EXACT SAME THING in an earlier note. Sigh….that little realization pulled me up a bit. But, and herein lies the rub and the lesson: did I take that in for myself? No. I did not. Not entirely. Because I got right up and kept on running, as I told myself was for me to do. Clearly, I needed a little more stillness. I wish it had not come at so high and painful a price, (sad little thank you to wounded left knee) but come for me, it did. And, in that stillness arrived clarity about my many blessings that I saw when my tears of pain and frustration had passed. In that stillness arrived clarity about the tiny seeds of change and growth that had surely been placed in my path, but missed for the speed at which I believed I needed to travel and the focus I believed better belonged elsewhere. Thankfully, they have patiently waited for me to realize their presence. Thankfully, their power to inspire me remains undiminished by the passage of time and presentation of numerous turns, bumps, twists and surprises.

Alright.

It is not how I imagined. So what.

It is not on the timeline I had planned. So what.

I have been bent,

I have been bowed,

I have been burned,

But

I am still here.

And I have work to do.

Let’s get after it!

Let’s Talk!

Viva La Revolution!

#ardetnecconsumitur