gathering my thoughts

Today is my official return from vacation to my 'normal' life. We returned home into a weekend, and spent our first few days restoring our normal patterns and catching up with loved ones. Now it is back to business. My bags are unpacked, and things are mostly settled, but now is when they really begin, with a Monday, in a fresh new week.

All of this is new to me. When I returned from vacation before, to my job in retail, I returned to a group of people who represented my daily life, and I held a place of my own among them. I knew my role, I knew what was expected. They were my daily community, and so vacation was a really big transition from my daily life. But this time, in this new phase of my life, the transitions have been more subtle. I took a little bit of space from my blog while I was away, but kept notes of ideas throughout my trip - my brain did not want to disconnect all the way! The chance to get away and commit myself to a time of relaxation was really wonderful, and now, in returning, I am experiencing gratitude all over again that this is my new reality. I get to come home to something I really, really love, and a purpose all my own.

But there is anxiety as well, in sitting down again to face my fears of failure as I write. There is ambiguity as I seek to define and fulfill my creative ambitions. On the one hand, I am more brave, as I have already started out on my path. But on the other hand, my stakes are higher, because I am further along. The more I achieve or realize my dreams, the more new dreams I want to achieve. And so as I return, I face another beginning, and this time it is at a new level of accountability. Today I must gather up my thoughts from my time away, and from before I left, and I must pick up my purpose once again. I must lay my thoughts out before me like tracks to my future, to the dreams I hope to fulfill down the road. I must read and re-read them, and organize them, and then I must dive back in to see where they will lead me.

Writing can be such a solitary endeavor, and I am grateful for those of you who share my passion and help me to create a new structure by reading what I write here. You are my community, my new "work" environment, and you help me find my place just by being there, and being you. Thank you!! My vacation was amazing, but I am also really, really happy to be back home.