Walking home from getting my hair cut (and colored) and having had a nice lunch out on a patio (alone), I had a strange feeling wash over me. I paused a moment to try to figure out what it was.
It was peace.
I’ve been spending months ticking items off of lists in my Happiness Project. Every so often, I get the feeling that I’m coming close to the end of the tunnel, that I am having time to do more of the things I enjoy. But then the tunnel gets longer again, and I’m left sprinting to get to see that little pinprick of light at the end once again.
All of the planning for our upcoming trip and other things have been slowing me down once again. It’s a feeling of no matter how much I do or how hard I work, the to do list is a mile long and is growing faster than I can shrink it. And my little friend Annie (aka anxiety) has been screeching at me – “You can’t do it all. You’re a failure. Everything will be ruined because you aren’t doing it right!”
But now that the trip is planned and all we have left is to pack and to go, Annie has taken a backseat. Now that she’s no longer in control, I can concentrate better and my thinking is clearer and thus work is going better, pushing Annie back into the trunk. While I’d love to think that I can leaver her at home for this trip, I’m afraid she’s gong to jump into my suitcase and join me anyway.
But for now, for today, I felt, for a moment, that sense of peace and calm that I’ve been struggling to find. And I’m going to remember that even if it goes away, all the work I’ve done in my Happiness project to clear away long standing projects and to replace them with things that bring me joy will help me to find that place more and more frequently.
