Achieving a Lofty Goal (Or, the Bear Went Over The Mountain...)

Since 2005, I've written more than a dozen novels, virtually every one of them dealing in one way or another with the issue of how a person puts their life back together after tragedy strikes.  I think every one of those stories was essentially my mind rehearsing various scenarios for what I might do if (when) my life imploded.  The first novel I wrote, Always Faithul, was really my fantasy about how I wanted to navigate midlife: launch my child successfully and go tripping down the path to old age, hand-in-hand with my husband, still as much in love as ever. I knew even as I was writing that story, my own ending would be different. My marriage was already dying, and neither of us made much of an attempt to save it.

After that, while my own life slowly unraveled, I wrote fantasies with various other scenarios: reconnecting with lost loves; finding new loves; pursuing some kind of new job in a new place, etc.

For the last three and a half years, the total focus of my life was to pick up the pieces of my shredded soul and get my daughter through college. I have accomplished both of those goals. I have reassembled the remnants of my past life into something new, and my kid has launched.  She's headed off on the next leg of her own journey to adulthood.

As a part of the process of reassembling my life, I spent a lot of time reading some of my past non-fiction writing, both my journals and  my previous attempts at blogging.  Reading one's journals is a terrifying thing. In retrospect, I could see the foreshadowing of future catastrophes that I couldn't imagine when I wrote the entry.  It can also be hilarious to discover how clueless I can be at times.  I also revisited my previous (abandoned) blogs.  I discovered there's some good stuff to be found there (some of which I am going to recycle and post here from time to time).

Right now, it's time for me to do the actual work of moving forward, alone, after that midlife meltdown. The task before me is to reach down and find out what I really want to do with my life (as opposed to what I used to want or thought I should want).

The time has come for me to walk my path.