Whew, I am a tired bunny this evening. I worked pretty much all day nearly from my waking until just a few minutes ago. During much of the day it was largely physical work–packing and moving boxes, uncluttering and dismantling my office furniture, hauling the pieces of it into the now empty room once occupied by my son. Toward the evening after a quick dinner it shifted to mental work, which was probably just as hard as all the physical labor perhaps because all of the physical exertion is now making mental processes take twice as long as when I’m rested. I am tired and sore and have a slight headache. In spite of all of this, I am grateful for this day in its entirety. I can safely say that there wasn’t a dull moment all day. Those times when I stopped moving long enough to eat and take a rest I was able to enjoy some football and tennis. I listened to my audiobook for part of the time, but for much of it I worked in silence, not even putting on music to pack by.
I won’t write much tonight. I am hoping that the Tylenol I just took will kick in shortly and I can go to bed. I am grateful for the motivation to put one foot in front of the other and keep moving. The other day I saw a quote from Les Brown, well-known motivational speaker, that talked about the power of keeping up the movement:
“Keep moving! You may be tired, fired, burnt out, and don’t feel like it…but keep moving! You may have stacks of bills, and may be stressed out about to pay them….but keep moving! You may have drama or trauma in your life…relationships…children…or career….but keep moving…”Right on, Les! I have been in keep moving mode for a while now. Today at times I ached to sit down, my back and legs were tired and strained. But, yep, I kept moving. There were times when I did sit down and watch a few plays of the football game or watch Serena Williams serving up aces at the US Open tennis tournament; but for the most part, I kept moving. And now it is night time–the time for stillness, darkness, expectation–and I am readying myself to take my rest.
I still have a lot of uncertainty in my life, though my picture of what’s next is starting to clear and I can see a little farther down the road than I had been able to before. I still take frequent rides on the mechanical bull of life, still being tossed and whipped around by the unpredictable bucks and spins and crazy whirls life takes. But I keep moving forward as best I can–whether I crawl or run or stride purposefully or skip, hopscotch or drag myself, as long as I’m moving toward my goal, it’s all good. “Go confidently in the direction of your dreams,” Thoreau suggested, but he didn’t specify the form of locomotion. I’ll get there however I can, and keep moving.
I am grateful for all that I got done today. I still have much to do before I am ready to leave here, and will do it largely on my own. But for today I must look over at what I accomplished and say, “It is good.” And as the prayer says, “what has not been done has not been done; let it be.” So, I’m gonna let it be. Because as Scarlett Ohara famously said in stating the obvious, “Tomorrow is another day.” And so it is.
