Rainbow

Rainbow

Monday 30 January 2017

Someday Island


I had my fair share of ideas, hopes, goals and dreams, the majority of them ended up on Someday Island.  I had two large storage containers worth of stuff on the island.  Ideas waiting to be born, to be given the light of day. 
When these flashes of inspiration popped into my heart, I would be excited, get swept along with the possibility; spend a few moments in a day dream… It felt like I was watching a movie of me doing something wonderful..  Then my brain the party pooper and what I thought was the big voice of reason would pipe up, reminding me that as a mother, spouse, employee, daughter, aunt, niece,  that whatever I was dreaming about was just that a dream, like a fairy tale.  It would say, "you haven’t got time for that. How could you possibly fit it in… The children, the children, what about the children…"
So that heartfelt idea joined the rest of the unexplored dreams and ideas on Someday Island… Someday island became more and more cluttered, I was struggling to find room for more stuff. It wasn’t organised, it was a big mess.  I wasn’t ready to let anything go, just in case someone managed to find extra hours in the day, where I could have a rummage through the stuff on Someday Island, select an idea and live it.  Who was I kidding, if I had any extra time, I would fill it up with stuff to make other people’s lives easier or better. My children could take on another activity or I could visit Aunty Doris more or fill it with a any task that kept me from focussing on me.  The truth was that I was scared, scared to sort through the ideas, organise and evaluate them. I thought that doing so would commit me to something that I wasn’t quite prepared for, spending time on me....
The persistent one
Some of the ideas just wouldn’t stop popping up over and over… I would go over the Island, find it amongst all the clutter, take it out and look at it like a trinket, blow ff the dust and place it back amongst the rest. But one day I decided to not just look at  a particular one, but look at them all, I was sorting through them, feeling them, trying them on like you would a pair of shoes. Did the flash of brilliance still resonate. Was it more than just an idea. Could I breathe life into it, create time in my life to achieve this thing.
The exercise of going through them was quite freeing. I was taking out the stuff that I had no connection to, creating space for the ‘things’ I wanted to explore further. Of course, the party pooper was still hanging around, but I felt okay because I was still in the evaluation stage and I felt that no one was missing out on me because I was doing this. 
 The creation of space was the declutter I needed. I felt relief when I discarded the ideas that I knew I would never act on, never develop. The few that remained were the right ones. These could become something that could make my heart sing.  

Now being able to see the wood for the trees, I was able to do a little research, and again this felt safe, no commitment, no signing on the dotted line. At that time, I didn’t feel like I should be doing something else. I began to really consider if I could pursue this thing that was becoming a goal. What was this thing, at the time it was actually a home study, I was interested in learning about Neuro Linguistic Programming… I started to see how much I could realistically dedicate to studying, whilst making sure that i could still take care of my family. This meant having discussions with my partner, really considering who was in my support network, and how they could support me. By having these conversations, it soon became apparent how much I could actually take on and when. 
From this position, I could really consider the who, where, how, what and when of achieving my goal.  In amongst all of this was the realisation that I already had far more support than I knew. Friends and family ready all to willing to help out, especially with my children. It was a win-win, my family got to spend some quality time with the kids without out me and my children got to know the family and create their own relationships with their grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins.  

Did I start my course? No i didn’t not right away, I put that off for about a year, but I did join a gym and discovered that I loved spinning classes and soca aerobics…

1 comment:

  1. Absolutely SMASHING!! Very incite full and emotional....lets have another peice

    ReplyDelete