This is not the post I sat down to write.
I had in mind a late wrap-up of a very content Thanksgiving: heaps of good food, hours of board games, reels of old movies, bottles of prosecco, miles of dog walks, days of conversation and laughter (and an exhausting 30 minutes in the grocery story parking lot that included a fender bender, but that’s a story best left untold).
(24 hooves. 16 paws. 8 feet. 8 hands. How many bees wings?)
But then I started typing and, well, that all seems miles back in the rear view mirror. The turkey tacos are a smokey memory and I’ve scraped the very last of the oatmeal pie into the trash. I just can’t look at it anymore, delicious as it was a week ago.
Today, I’m firmly tethered to the current Thursday, but I’m floating somewhere down the road.
Today, I’ve got two feet planted on this worn out wooden floor, but my eyes are scanning the foggy horizon.
I’m as here and now as I’ve ever been—hay in my hair, bits of firewood stitched into my sweater, shivering slightly with the cold wet that is neither rain nor snow—and still I’m not here.
I have in mind a change. Career-wise, that is. This isn’t really anything new (remember that graduate program in Pittsburgh 20-odd years ago?), but I feel a new urgency to figure out how to piece the fragments of my interests into a more satisfying whole.
Years ago, someone my age might be looking toward retirement in the next 5-10 years. That’s not how the world works anymore. I can’t just bide my time and wait for the clock to wind down.
This feels like starting over, but starting from the end, knowing too much and not enough.
It feels confusing and hard and terrifying and a tiny bit exciting.
And necessary.