Driving Forward, Looking Back

When I was up in the weeeee hours of the morning this morning, I did some hard thinking.
I do a lot of hard thinking in the wee hours. What else is there to do?

I think over the past couple of years, since my divorce, I've pretty much been in a holding pattern. Certainly for the last year I've been sort of coasting, letting things happen, taking it easy.

Lately, however, I have a sense of Life Passing Me By. I look at where I've been and where I am and realize I have no sense of where I go from here. At present I have no real future... just tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.

Maybe it's because when I was married I felt like my future – our future together – was more or less mapped out, I didn't think about it much then. Since then I have had a sense of my future being erased, or destroyed, and for over a year all I could see ahead was rubble. But now I see nothing. And there's nothing left behind me when I look back. Certainly there is nowhere back there for me to go. And no reason to cling to it like a shipwreck survivor.

I exist, in one sense, in a Tabula Rasa. A clean slate.

What I'm learning in talking to others is that most people, at some point in their lives, find themselves starting over. I didn't know that until I found myself doing it. But the more I talk with people, the more I see amazing dips and curves and right angles in their lives. Mine is no different. It is just mine.

So I declared this the Year Zero. And set myself some simple touchpoints to guide me. I thought "I need to know what I want from this new life I'm offered, so I can begin now to create it, not just to take what happens." So here is what I came up with. I'll call them The Nine:

1) I want to feel good about myself: physically and emotionally.

2) I want to manage my relationship with alcohol, and with all potentially damaging extremes

3) I want to be financially secure and independent

4) I want to build and maintain a supportive network of friends

5) I want to have a variety of interesting experiences that enrich my life and the life of my son

6) I want to be creative and productive

7) I want a home of my own

8) I want to live in a world in which I seek ways to say a hopeful yes to my heart's desires, not reasons to say a fearful no

9) I want to love and be loved.

Those are the Nine. And every day I think I need to ask myself "What have I done today to further the Nine?"

And finally, I think there is a tenth principle, but since it's one of negativity, not a want, I hold it separate.

10 is "No regrets. No guilt." In other words, my past is behind me and I am who I am. It's okay to seek out the life I want for me.

I realize Grayson does not figure in this list. Of course, he's central to everything in my life. And of course I want a happy, safe and fulfilling life for him as well. But this is the list for myself, so I kept the focus on me and what I want. I think if I can stay true to this list, and just keep moving forward, I'll get somewhere good.

Starting Today.