The Only Thing Constant is Change
I’ve been majorly avoiding this blog, probably because I know how it looks. Every month or so I put up a post about how crazy things have been and how I’m starting over. I try to make it quippy and funny. Then 4 weeks later I’m still doing the same thing, only after another chasm has somehow changed everything forever.
This life is a challenge.
I remember when I was teaching at Walsh and worried that if I stayed there the next 25 years would look exactly the same and I wasn’t happy with that. So instead I chose a life that requires every February – May to be a scramble to figure out how I’m going to support myself, keep inspired, stay healthy, not go totally nuts with worry. And now I find myself looking back at the Walsh days with a fond nostalgia toward its consistency. Everything there is pretty much the same.
So, this, maybe is the lesson I’m supposed to learn in graduate school, the one I didn’t know I was paying for: that life goes on, opportunities come and go, people come and go, and my life and that which ultimately stays important is where I am.
These last months have been hard, presenting me with challenges I’ve never even thought about facing…mostly involving taking action on plans of which I cannot envision an exact, finite end point. It’s truly been about making moves with the resources I have now and hoping that it works out in the end and at the same time learning how to adjust expectations and re-frame the way things work out when they’re beyond my control. I’m learning one step at a time to “go with the flow.” It’s been backbreaking some days.
But I should learn to be careful what to wish for. For the last several years I’ve bemoaned a lack of constancy in my life. I’ve hoped for some kind of foundation to ground me. I think I’ve found my constant and it’s name is change.
It’s not the constant I expected. But it sure is always there.