“Don't wait until everything is just right. It will never be perfect. There will always be challenges, obstacles and less than perfect conditions. So what. Get started now. With each step you take, you will grow stronger and stronger, more and more skilled, more and more self-confident and more and more successful.”

~ Mark Victor Hansen ~




I woke up recently and realized that I have been waiting to live my life. My finances were not in good shape. I've gained quite a lot of weight, and my cottage is a mess. I've been waiting for that one perfect day to make it all come together in some magical perfect way and the longer I waited the further and further I drifted away from my goals. I was in a sorry state and I had let myself slide right into it. It wasn't all conscious, and I had many "good excuses," but you can't wait to lose weight until your mother dies, allowing yourself to wallow in grief and depression. You can't wait to get your finances in order, for your own peace of mind and stability. And you can't wait to cleanse and purge your life of all that has been weighing you down. You'll be six feet under and on your tomb stone it will say, "I might have made it, if only I'd tried." Or so I imagine it would have been for me if God had not spoken to me so loudly the walls shook, and angels on both shoulders were tugging at my hair saying c'mon, c'mon, let's get to gettin'. Geez. Alright already.

I got counselors to help me with my finances. Today I joined Nutrisystem. I have been, quite inexplicably, cleaning my house. Even the pugs look at me as if they are proud of me. Now that's something. Impressing a pug is no small feat.

And so tonight I am drifting on clouds a bit. And I'm making pages of notes full of things to be done. I've done quite a bit of cleaning, made several important calls, and promised myself that I would update both of my blogs this evening. This one is easier because they are short pieces of things that occur to me in the moment. My dear blog, the blog closest to my heart, Maitri's Heart, are longer writings, very deep for me, intensely felt, full of deep truths for me in my current life. Things I'm learning and things I want to share. Sometimes it takes me days to come to what feels right there, and as my mother has been in and out of the hospital 4 times in the last 2 weeks, my heart has hurt too much to stay there long. But, as I've written before, my mother, through 4 1/2 years of cancer, going through the worst of it, would tell you if you called her and asked how she was, "Every day's a good day, it is what you make it." How can I not follow her example?

And so tonight I will feel really good about myself. I may be just at the beginning of many of these changes, but I think that more than half the battle is simply making a firm decision to do it. When I got off the phone after signing up with Nutrisystem, I don't think my feet touched the ground. Amen. Hallelujah.

In one of my favorite Dr. Seuss books which we read many times over to our children, and I now read to my grandson -- Marvin K. Mooney -- Seuss wrote, "The time has come, the time is now, Marvin K. Mooney will you please go now!"

I'm going Dr. Seuss. I'm going...

Onwards and Upwards!