Plans have frequently eluded me and I’m not sure why that is. From the book Coaching the Artist Within by Eric Maisel one sentence made me sit up and take notice:“When it got harder I stopped planning.” I saw my various projects with a different perspective. It has always been easy to have a goal, often more like a very dreamy dream. It has usually been easy to gather the materials I need for any project. However if the goal set is too far away, or when it gets harder, the project is left to stagnate, often forgotten. All I need do, is look at the clutter on my table, glance over at the card table with my paints ready to go, my crochet basket with an unfinished sweater………and with each one of them as soon as it got harder I stopped. Granted I have looked up solutions to get me past any particular block, but resist going further, and ultimately lose interest. Of greater importance is my will to move further into retirement. A simple task - fill out government forms, put them in the mail box and all done. I’ve filled out government forms before, and forms for work, for donations and on and on. But this retirement thing is hard, really hard.
Sorting through my mind about retirement is also hard. It is not as simple as putting cutlery in it’s proper places in the drawer. Not as easy as culling out and donating books to a library. It is confronting that age-old issue of identity and purpose. I have long said to myself that my epilepsy is not my name, is not me it is merely a part of me. A pretty important part of me that shouldn’t be neglected. But nursing? If I retire from a decades long work in nursing, where do my beliefs in nursing go? Were they ever important? Are they still important or just outdated and now meaningless.
Bumping along through all of these questions, the government form waving at me like a ghost even though buried beneath other paperwork, I return to plans and goals. Also from Coaching the Artist Within, one of Eric Maisel’s clients, reminded him of a conversation they shared. ‘Do you remember that? We decided that goal was sexier and more exciting and that plan was dowdy and boring. But there was much more muscle in a sentence like ‘I plan to………every day. It was like the difference between getting up and going to work or staying in bed wishing that the work would get done. I’d been spending a lot of time in bed entirely depressed and couldn’t deal with ‘goals’. But I could deal with a daily plan.’
So what plan have I had on a daily basis, or have I? Actually a fair amount, minus the forms and the actual stepping away from nursing employ. In about 2004, when I was living in Kelowna, I did start with hesitation on a plan to write as a retirement activity. I just started with little ideas, and stories, but no plan to write daily. I took a bit of a sabbatical on that plan until I was settled here in Victoria. I began to write daily. I have planned to be in contact more frequently with family, which has improved but still needs work. I have been participating in book club, writing groups, and spending time with friends. All of these activities outside of the sphere of nursing in order to learn more about the world outside of health care. Writing for over a decade has become part of my life, and still there are spaces of time. Spaces of time that I can use at my discretion. My future seems to hold lots of quite scary open space, so I am encouraged to expand my horizons. Maybe only in the writing world, or could there be more? I don’t wish to ‘spend a lot of time in bed and entirely depressed’…wishing my life to be filled without my energy behind it. Puzzling out a plan, in the morning, on a daily basis is intriguing suggesting each day can be shaped and made to measure and giving me that future.
“The best plans are always the simplest.”
~ Jasper Fforde
**Please remember! March is Epilepsy month. Purple Day for Epilepsy is March 26 around the world and in your neighbourhood.
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