People keep telling me we have accomplished a lot since May. They point to the two Relays we did last year, to the Walks for Hunger and Diabetes I did last spring, to the Jimmy Fund Walk, to this website, to the work I am doing for this year’s Greater Fall River Relay, to the Walking with Jane Fund for NEC…
Objectively, it does seem like a lot. But I know all the other things that are on my list that I have not gotten to. Some of them, like the NET Cure Crawl, require more time and energy–and bodies–than I realistically have just now. The idea is there, but I have no real idea how to move it toward reality. I’m frustrated that when I get to the end of the day, that there are more things on the to-do list than when I started–and that too few things have come off the list over the course of the day.
That progress has been even slower on the non-Walking with Jane fronts only adds to the frustration. I am trying to re-organize the house but am at that stage where all I feel I have actually done is move the mess from one location to another. You know the stage where everything looks worse just before it starts to get better? That is exactly where I am. Three-quarters of everything we own is in boxes. I went to get something I needed for a meeting last night and could not remember where I had put it. It is here somewhere–I just have no idea where.
Of course, there is still Jane’s closet and the drawers with her clothes in them. Once a week, I will open a drawer with the intention of going through it. I close the drawer without doing more than look at whatever is at the top of the drawer. Dealing with that is not something I can do yet. People tell me the time will come–but not yet.
Jane and I were unrepentant goal-setters and planners. We had plans for every day, for every week, for every month, for every year. We had five-year plans and ten-year plans.
On my flight back from Seattle in December, I sat with a notebook, blocking out the plans for the next five years, for this year, for the month of January–and for every day of the first week of the new year.
There are things on that list for the first week I still have not managed to do. Today is the last day of February–and a good chunk of January is still waiting for my attention.
But that is life. We plan. We work toward the goals we set. We believe we will create a future that is better than the present. Sometimes we encounter success. Sometimes we encounter disappointment. But every day we learn something new–every day we move one step closer to that imagined world.
It may seem the journey takes too long and that we are getting nowhere. But every day moves us forward–and sometimes that is the point of the exercise.
