Back on My Journey

I’ve been a bit absent from my blog the last few days. Brit Boy and I have been wallowing a bit more in the afterglow of the holidays before we go along with everyone else into the first full week of the new year :-) So we chilled out this weekend and didn’t go anywhere and it was just great. Saturday we slept in and we relished just sitting around watching movies and just letting the day happen.

Then on Sunday we woke up at about 8am and turned on the TV and started watching this show about people going into the second act of their lives and doing something they always wanted to do. It was great. We ended up watching about three hour-long episodes from bed with one trip downstairs to get green tea and we so enjoyed both…the tea and the show.

They were showing episodes all day. We were so enthralled that we couldn’t tear ourselves away. So while we were getting dressed, we recorded what we were missing. We were hooked :-) But it was good to be hooked on this.

When we were dressed and were sitting down to have lunch, we picked up with watching again. I guess that we were both so into it because we were open to what it was saying…that it’s never too late to do something different with your life.

Brit Boy and I are at a point in our lives where we have been out of school a couple of decades, so we have experienced life a bit. But the way we look at it, there is more experience, life, happiness and fulfillment out there to be had. So I think that we both were very receptive to this show and ready to receive the message. Most of the people on the programs were a decade or two decades older than us, but age was irrelevant in the end. You don’t lose your passions in life just because you have counted more birthdays. What struck me was the underlying theme in all of the episodes, which was to do what you want with your life now, while you have your life to live. Most of the people profiled on the show had long held dreams of pursuing something else, but had to make a living at something else in order to raise their families. Then their kids grew up and they decided it was time for them to take on the second acts in their lives. You could see the twinkle in their eyes along with a bit of anxiety, but it was the greatest thing to see people rediscover a part of themselves.

Seeing this show was so timely for me personally. I wrote in my end of year post that getting separated from Brit Boy twice while we were in London was a good thing for me. Well I feel like the London experiences and how I have been feeling lately and even this show have all converged at this moment to pull me out of this sleep I’ve been in somewhat for quite a while. Sometimes clarity comes in roundabout ways :-)

In a couple of months, I will have been in England for three years and it’s only now that I am really starting to take a real look around. To be truthful, it has been scary. When I moved here, I was doing a whole lot of things at one time. I’ve read since that there are certain life experiences that knock us for a loop even when they are good things. This article said that death of course shakes you up, but the list also included: leaving a job/changing careers, getting married, and moving to name a few. Well, when I came over here in March of 2006, I had done all of them at the same time. I left my job right before Christmas in 2005; eight days later my mom passed away; then I was still trying to be optimistic about getting married (I loved Brit Boy and wanted to marry him, but I was so sad about my mom. I just wanted to go to bed); and then I moved away from the familiarity of home across the Atlantic and I was not myself. Like I said, there were happy things in there, except for my mom’s passing. The good things were things that I wanted, but grief turned everything so upside down.

So I arrived here seriously diluted, but it was sink or swim, so I tried to swim. That didn’t work out so good. I had been here before many times, but visiting is nothing like living somewhere and the culture shock that is normal, just hit me full on as it mixed with everything else. It was too much to take, so I shut down a lot of who I was before. I got married and then I became a lady in waiting…waiting for what I didn’t know.

As I’ve written previously, it’s taken some time, but now I’m finding my groove again. A LOT has challenged me in the last few years and day by day, the Dori I knew before has reappeared, and a lot of that started with beginning to write this blog. And I’m so grateful to all of you that come here to read what I write. It has been so therapeutic to just show up here. I’m more of who I used to be, but there is also change in me…one of the beautiful by-products of living life. We grow :-)

Now that I am getting more connected with myself again, I’m asking myself lately…”So what do you want to do now Dori?” Well, I have a few ideas, but they aren’t in full focus yet. However, that show yesterday showed me that you should just go for it in life. So I think I will :-) It's so true what they say...life is short. My favorite line out of “The Shawshank Redemption” is, we should…”get busy livin’ or get busy dying”.

So I’m back on my journey again and I hope to explore life more here on my blog in this brand new year.