I feel myself starting to come to life again.  I enjoy things.  I go to sleep at night, and I wake up in the morning.  I don’t take sleeping pills, and I am eliminating caffeine.  I go to the gym because I want to go.  I spend time with people because it sounds fun or I miss them, not because it is what I should do.  I am looking for work again.  I can see that the job I have will never become a satisfying career, and I am making contacts so I can move on to something else.  I even have ideas about what that something else might be.  Most surprisingly, I think I am ready to date.  And I mean ready to go on real dates, not just go out with someone so I can get his pants off.

 

I can also see that I keep getting in my own way.  I don’t want coffee, but I’ll have some because it goes so well with the glazed donut I’m eating to cancel out the killer workout I just finished.  All of the fantastic friends of friends who are willing to talk to me about my career ambitions keep getting shuffled to tomorrow’s to-do list.  The friends I want to be better friends with go into the “fun things I can do after I finish everything else” pile.  And dating has become something I will do when all of my other goals are met.  The goals I haven’t defined yet.

 

It is as though I am still in a wintery hibernation mode.  My dreams are of the better things to come.  The things that I will soon let myself experience.  The goals that I will let myself set and meet.  The life that I will let myself feel.  Tomorrow.

 

A friend has interrupted my complacency and inspired me.  She has a list of things she wants to do, and she holds herself accountable by publishing the list on her blog and writing about each activity thing as she completes it.  I know other people with bucket lists, but my reaction is always that I don’t have that many things I want to accomplish.  It’s that same old mental block, telling me again that I should not bother with setting goals.

 

But I need to set goals.  If I have learned anything about myself it is that I need to feel like I am moving forward.  My friend’s stories about the things she is doing make me yearn for the same sense of orderly, visible progress.  I am going to make my own list.  I have already begun it, and I know it will not be very long, but I am going to do it.  I may not be a crying pile of mush anymore, but I still spend too much time in my head.  I need to spend more time in the world – feeling, doing, being.  It is right there, waiting for me to gather up the energy to be a part of it.

 

I am ready.  I am almost set.  And then I will go.