Breaking Bad Habits

Last week, while I was gearing up to write a post that in some way explained, if not excused, my three or four month absence/negligence/less than stellar effort to write, I came across a few things dated 2010 and 2011. That I could find a list of things to do or reread an email from four years ago and feel like it was yesterday was a little disconcerting. I felt nothing akin to how I did when graduating from college I remembered Moving In Day, so proud of the confident woman I'd become as I thought back to how unsure and timid I was just four years earlier. Nostalgia was absent.

Looking back on the four years that had passed I longed only for people I have lost. Yet I also felt a profound sense of disappointment and discontent with myself, having done nothing since they passed away that would make them proud or that I would want to tell them about. If I could be granted a special wish for Middle Aged Women Trying to Figure Things Out and sit by my pool with Donna this weekend as we had on Memorial Day weekends past, I would still be complaining about teaching, how education is not what it used to be, and how I don't believe in what I am being asked to do anymore.

And that is absolutely not the conversation I want to have with her when I get to have one again. 

Aha.

I understand now how people stay in unproductive and unhappy habits and relationships for longer than they should because I see myself as one of them. 

So I am left to the task of forgiving myself for getting stuck, and then I move on to find joy. I forge a plan and brace myself for an adventure, willing to take risks for my new normal to be a happy one. 

I'll keep you posted.