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I'll admit I don't get stuck often. But when I do. . . well, it's Rube Goldberg meets Catch-22. I can't do This because of That. I can't do That because of This. And in between This and That, there are a whole lot of gyrations that lead nowhere useful and don't enhance the process -- twists and turns and ups and downs and around the bends -- the boot kicks the chicken which lays the egg into the frying pan heated by the toaster started by a glass on its lever being filled with orange juice . . . you get the picture. And yet, the gyrations and the catch seem as real and viable and impassable to me as true realities of my life. It's hard to tell the sticking points I've manufactured from the ones that are really there. I'm that good at it.
Getting stuck is easy. Getting unstuck is the hard part.
Most of the time when I'm stuck, it's time related. I can't do The Important Thing until something else has happened or a certain time has arrived. For example, I'd love to have a job where I travel constantly. That's right, no home address, just me and the Holiday Inns of the world. But I can't do that yet. I still have a son at home who needs me and needs our school district so, for the past 17 years, my feet have been superglued to suburbia.
In the earlier stuck-at-home years, I felt real frustration at not being able to go as I pleased. I could have grown resentful and bitter (why won't that darn kid just grow up faster?), but instead, I took a good look at what I would need to do, to have in place, so that when the time came, I was ready. I could grease the skids to make things move not faster, but smoother. Making plans for the future kept me moving forward and not feeling so stuck at all.
And a funny thing happened along the way. I received an opportunity where I could be at home on the weeks my son is with me and work halfway across the country on the weeks he's with his Dad. I'm not completely untethered from my suburban post, but I'm not shackled to it either. And most of all, I don't think this opportunity would have presented itself if I had not spent so much of my stuck time preparing for to be unstuck some day.
I've got less than 2 years to go before I am completely free to be responsible only for myself. A major part of me is looking forward to being completely unstuck. But part of me is grateful for the stuck days I've had. I don't regret any of the time I've spent dreaming and planning for the future. It's given me time to really figure out what I want, what's important, what's not, what I must have, what I can do without. In all these years in the suburbs, I've learned to make the most of life's adhesive, to enjoy This while I plan for That, and to enjoy That because I always get to come home to This, my truly Important Thing.
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