Reflecting With Pictures & Words

It is startling to realize that I am, perhaps, in the middle of my life.

I have decided that I am pretty sure there must be a Beginning,,,, Beginning Middle,,, End Middle,,,,, Beginning End,,, and then End End,,, to a person’s life. When lived long that is.

Which,

(if in fact that is so)

puts me at about the middle of my Beginning Middle- probably like right smack in the middle, which means in like 15 or 20 more years I will be somewhere in End Middle.

Weird.

Sure it sounds like my imminent End End isn’t lurking right around the corner- but it is the first time in my life I have considered where I am in my life, and to truly weigh the value of my life truly decide how I am measuring my successes and failures throughout my life and to acknowledge to myself just how short even a really long life is.

My life seems sooooooo much more life a GIFT now than it ever has before in my life.

I think that is interesting.

Things are moving so fast!

My kids are getting big—and they are leaving!

Leaving.

I am COMPLETELY divided about this on the inside of myself, one part of me wanting to jump in the middle (of what?) digging my heels into the ground barking STOP!

*sniffle*

The other half of me-

a little excited,

a little curious,

quiet.

But it’s ok… it’s a good quiet.

For a while now I have been starting to dream a new dream. Starting to glimpse a picture of my life lived more often at the pace Nicholas and I live at when it is only he & I and I think it feels good.

It’s a scary thought, because it’s a new thought, but a good, exciting, crispy crunchy thought too.

In recent years I have been starting to embrace the idea that I can live my life more intentionally and that planning things out doesn’t make me “boring and predictable” like I have always thought it somehow did- being prepared actually allows me the freedom to know when it is alright for me to relax my mind.

I used to always fly by the seat of my pants. I have for most of my life actually and I have really enjoyed it and been excited by running full speed into the unknown.

In the last few years though, in ways little and big, I have begun to realize the ways in which it no longer suits me to do that- mainly, because I end up missing out on a lot of things that I wouldn’t have to if I had just known in advance and taken the time to have a plan.