Next Up

It's been awhile since I thought too far into the future. Caring for an elder means you live in the moment and that is where we have been for the past 8 years. Living day by day, week by week. Today my horoscope says to fantasize about a thrilling adventure you will have one day; and imagine who you want to be three years from now. I am pretty sure I still want to be me but a less worried version. In fact I am less worried these days, work is better and my general outlook continues to improve. I used to worry about losing my ambition and sinking into the couch like lost change. But dammit if I didn't get happier and then I started getting ideas again about doing things and making things and it turned into some kind of medicine for my poor tortured soul. I have actually been toying with a 5 year plan again which I have not done for some time. The last one came around the time of a grand-mal seizure I had in 1991, the same night Rodney King was beaten senseless by the Sylmar police. I lived in Sylmar then, what were the odds? I was stressed out and exhausted. My husband at the time was in the throes of some horrible anxiety disorder that made it impossible for him to leave the house. I lost my drivers license as part of the fall-out of the seizure and the one thing I needed him to do—drive me around—he could not do. I needed a plan so I made one. I concocted it late at night when I lay in bed afraid of falling asleep waiting for my brain to fail me, it involved moving away from my comfy job as an Art Director at A&M Records to create a life that was a mix of what I had known growing up in rural Canada and a car commercial that was playing on TV in 1991 for Isuzu, that involved a guy driving down a mountain side to get his mail. This spoke to me and so the 5 year plan took shape. It actually took about 4 years to realize but let's not split hairs. In the ensuing years things have happened in 4 or 5 year increments. This year marks 10 years that Mark and I have been together and 15 yrs since my mother died. So I am looking ahead. With Eddy no longer what we are planning around in the short term we can turn our minds to what we want to do next and it feels good and light despite the sadness. I have no answers yet, just some broad strokes and loads of ideas that I am not holding onto too tightly, rather I am watching them flip and fly and entice me to keep moving forward, coaxing coaxing.