Loosening the grip (on the ordinary)

 

Life - well, my life - is taking many detours as of late. First the diagnosis which I suppose put the rest in motion. Moving across the country (where I did battle with the 'worst winter we've seen in years') and then the most recent. Leaving my position, my career. It's only been a week and a half since I closed the chapter I so intentionally started in the summer of 2024.

So everything, or seemingly everything, that felt ordinary has slipped away through my fingers like sand. But that doesn't mean I'm fully able to accept the loss of what so many, including myself, take for granted.

The expression is, in and of itself, so completely true now: sometimes it's just Tuesday. But my Tuesdays look different now. 

I don't know what new life is trying to find me. I want it to include writing. I need it to include four-legged interactions. For now it includes daily meditations, movement, and as much human connection as I can make room for. I want whatever I am destined for to be both brilliant and ordinary. 

But I am trying to loosen my grip on that ache for ordinary. Maybe it's not meant to feel that way anymore, or for now. Leaning into the unknown, the unfamiliar, the uncomfortable may simply be what I'm designed to do in this chapter.

My therapist and I have decided to call it my sabbatical. That the loss and necessary closure of the career I have spent more than two decades pursuing is simply my life's road to rest and recovery. A break from what I know, and thought I loved most. Much like my deep desire to have a dog in my life. Now is not the time.

What I want is for my medicine, my treatment, to work as well as it is for as long as possible. And to that end it will allow me to explore new avenues, a new path that I will walk with - admittedly - shaky confidence but yes conviction too.
I want other things too. But mostly right now in this period of time I want the strength and resolve to accept my current reality with as much grace as I can muster while I quietly strive for more.