It’s a snippet from my latest vision board, before I knew what was developing on the horizon, back when unsettledness simmered just below the surface. It was preparing me, oblivious me, for the challenges ahead.
And here I am, sitting at my daughter’s monster kitchen island where the internet flows unhindered to my ancient HP.
The service here is vastly unlike at home, where I depend upon my Android’s moody hotspot to keep me connected. And when I’ve exhausted the 50 gigabytes of high speed, which I can do in less than a week, I’m suddenly cut off. Just like that. I have no television. No computer. I’m reduced to my phone’s data, using the tiny screen for movies and the minuscule keyboard for writing my books, my blogs, writing anything for that matter. Frustrating is too gentle a word for the inner rage.
There are options…
I can drive 45 minutes to the public library in Grand Rapids and use its wifi connection. I’ve haunted the place lately. The broad expanses of glass overlooking the Mississippi River and the soaring, beamed ceiling offer a stunning venue.
Or I could sit at any coffee shop, brewery, cafe, probably even Dairy Queen in that bustling town, and connect. I don’t want to appear ungrateful. It’s just that I would so much rather skip the inconvenience of the hour-and-a-half round trip and work from home.
When I imagined this week in Minneapolis, caring for Velo, the cat, who was not invited to accompany the family on vacation, I believed their dependable wifi would allow me to zip through the final steps of making my just-published book available for purchase to all my blog readers in no time. I’d design an Author’s Page, add some links, and presto! Done!
Reality can be such a downer.
Somehow, don’t ask me how, in an attempt to toggle a new page, I managed to mangle the website. It took hours to fix the mess. I made it private while I worked to redeem the wreckage so none of my subscribers (you) would witness my ineptitude. In my defense, WordPress is NOT the easiest platform to navigate. Come to find out, I couldn’t even accomplish the private part properly. Suddenly, my stats were climbing. People were accessing the site regardless of my frantic efforts to deter them.
Throughout the process, Velo probably heard words that aren’t allowed in this household, where my seven-year-old grandsons are strongly discouraged from voicing playground expletives. But my pressure valve sputters like a boiling teakettle when agitation mounts, and it’s crudely audible when I’m alone. Velo doesn’t count.
I persisted. At last my Author Page on https://writingforselfdiscovery.com/ went live. The cloud picture I chose to headline the site reflects my emotional landscape of the past several weeks, signifying the other thing that’s been harder than it should be.
The term, ungrounded, doesn’t do justice to my degree of inner chaos. Ever since Portugal, I’ve been out of sync with myself. I’ve gone through the motions of someone rooted to a place, trying to make it true. I created a huge flower bed, transplanted perennials, and bought a weed eater. I dug up oak seedlings and sowed them in my yard along with baby white pines. All the while, a thousand miles away and shimmering like a mirage, my new life was taking shape.
I’m moving…again. It will be a radical shift, almost as jarring and liberating as the transition to Bali in 2012. This time it’s Minnesota to South Carolina, Midwest to eastern seaboard, Scandinavian brogue to southern drawl, country to city. It may be temporary – a blip on the landscape lasting a few months. Time will tell.
But what if…
What if I love it? What if it feels right? What if I’m needed? Wanted there? No wonder my head is a cloudy fog. But firm on the ground beneath is the certainty. Whatever this is, it’s what I want. It’s a leap into the unknown, and it’s just that kind of leap that, for me, makes life worth living.
writing for self-discovery 
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