The Next Thing

Kissing the 50 hour work week good-bye and... now what.

I can almost hear my dogs barking a chorus of “Next thing! Next thing!” as I exhale and remove myself from the chair I’ve been lounging in. They never know what exactly the next thing is… but they know they want to be a part of it.

Vice walking on a snowy trail

The enthusiasm they bring to “Next Thing” is endearing and alien to me. The new and unknown are a familiar roost for my anxieties. I get stuck under the pressure to produce constantly. This pressure is often muddled with the dread of knowing it will never quite feel like enough has been done.

I feel so wasteful. Wasteful not taking advantage of the free time to get ahead. Wasteful over the loss of “real time to relax” when I DO use my rest time to be productive. It’s a lose-lose game I’ve played with myself for the last decade and I’ve grown tired and resentful of the whole dance.

An opportunity to choose how I spend my time has presented itself. This time I’m trying something different.

I’m going to rest. I’m going to walk. I’m going to write.

I am going to write.

I’ve been writing here and there for years, but now it’s official. I’m so confident in this that I’ve even told people about it! Now people want to know what kind of things I write. Shockingly, some of those people expect me to DO something with this declaration.

Perhaps my hand was a bit heavy when I suggested that I just…. didn’t cancel my trip. Somehow between “What would you think about me coming up anyway…” and my feet hitting the pavement in Provincetown I had agreed to sign up for a writing workshop… no, two writing workshops and a short story writing challenge.

We all know that signing up for something is one thing and actually doing something is a whole different beast- but it’s a start. One must begin carving out room to play in some fashion after all, why not this way?

Vice and her Beagle friend, Alice, on the beach

The only constant in life continues to be change. I hope I can muster half of the excitement my dogs have as I embark on this Next Thing.