Standing Still

For better or worse, I don't have a bucket list these days. And that is, perhaps, why I haven't been writing. I don't have much to say. I am neither blissfully happy nor ridden with angst. My life is still these days. Most changes are so incremental, I barely recognize them. But I am content. Happy, even. And happy to recognize it while I'm living it.

I have stopped planning the future. It's a huge change for me. Like my mother, I tend to think about the six next steps in life and to try to plan for them. But I've realized two things of late. First, that planning rarely works. The best laid plans of mice and men and all that. But second, and more importantly, I'm learning to live in the present and to enjoy that. I don't know what comes next. And that's ok. For now, I am happy standing still.

I look at my life sometimes and wonder how I got here, but I'm not troubled by it. I'm just surprised. I spend more time with myself than I ever have before and I think that has been good for me. I thought it might make me narcissistic and that I'd spend my days navel-gazing, but instead, it has, in some ways, set me free from myself and allowed me to just be without having to figure out why, who, what, when, where.

I like it. It is peaceful here.