Everywhere I try to go at the moment, I meet a sign. The road is closed. There is a diversion. Sometimes I disregard the signs and go along anyway, only to find myself executing a fifty eight point turn between someone’s garden wall and a series of strategically placed plastic barriers. Is this a metaphor?
There is something important I’m supposed to be doing. I was all set to get on with it, key objectives in place, planning to commence after the Easter holidays. On the first day of term, driving back from delivering one offspring to school, six hours ahead of me, vibrant with potential achievement, my mobile rang. It was the school of offspring 2, to say she was ill – half an hour into the school term.
I collected her and took her home via the doctor’s surgery. With her pain and my anxiety levels escalating, I spoke to the doctor again over the phone, returned with her to the surgery, and then onto hospital….suspected appendicitis.
Thankfully it wasn’t, but if it had been, I would almost have been grateful. Twenty four hours on a children’s ward makes you appreciate what you’ve got, I can tell you.
Meanwhile, the thing I had to get on with, something writing-wise I’ve been building up to for a number of years, didn’t get done. There are times when these things are out of your hands.
Still, once everything was resolved, everyone healthy, did I get on with it? Nope. Doubt danced in, hand in hand with the internal critic, diverting me from the righteous path. Watching me flounder and generally give in to the vagaries of life, the IT Director set me a deadline for the important thing. That’s what I need, a deadline setter. It works. I have made significant progress with three days still to go, and that is saying a lot when you see who has moved in:
