now

We're pretty content, right now.

J and I have been married for almost a year.  Yes, life as a blended family, who are together all the time due to a global pandemic, includes some ongoing challenges. Yet, life as a family, in our own home, with garden beds in the front and back yards, with neighbors who are friends, is good.  

Which makes me wonder... what's next? For each of us? For the family we are becoming?  What will we choose and how will we support each other in achieving those new goals?

I feel like it's time for me to push through and out of another shell.  I list possibilities in my journal of what my "next" could be.  I'm thinking in two directions: outward into the community of my son's school and our district, and inward into some special reading and writing. Both of these directions have been calling to me for a while, but I've always felt too tired, too distracted, too small to begin.  Things needed to be stable and I needed to feel better, energized, ready.  Now, I think that if I wait any longer I will become cemented in my contentment.  

I wonder how many people feel ready for what's next.  I observe some folks who make tidy paths of milestones, each achievement qualifying them to pursue the next.  How do they do that?  What guides them or fuels them for such a course? My path is scribbled and overlapping.  I am often disoriented and simply road weary.  

Now, however, I can see and appreciate what we have here.  It was a long and uncomfortable journey to reach this place.  So, I will step, next, more fully into where I am.