Don’t you hate it when you miss your turn-off?

Yes, i know, many of us use GPS now. But i still like to study a map at home before heading to the airport.
I tend to become anxious about catching the information in time to get to the lane i need, so it calms me to have an aerial view in mind as i’m trying to follow the signs and instructions.

The idea of planning for changing lanes came to mind when i noticed the date first thing this morning. Today marks seven years since the name change which precipitated the title of this blog.

I like it when dates sneak up on me like that. This anniversary wasn’t one i’d been looking ahead toward, as i’m prone to do, hand at forehead shading my squinting eyes.

It feels good to be reminded by surprise that returning to my birth name represented a lane change i eagerly chose, emblematic of setting off for a fresh future, and reconnecting with an earlier selfhood.

What a wild seven years it’s been.
Taken alongside other arbitrary blocks of time, it has been marked more by disrupting and blindsiding turns and twists than by planned lane changes.

Regular readers will understand the reference to surviving cancer along with its attendant losses. To the years it took to navigate the obstacles and detours, getting far enough through them for the eventual silver linings to make themselves plain.

Here’s to finally landing, for now, back on a main road — where dreams can re-stir. Dreams of venturing to new places, of telling the stories, of influencing my own direction among the lanes left open.

Not just external options have changed, but also ways of seeing.
There are lanes to choose internally too.

A post five years ago listed a few take-aways from that time.
I have a few to add, being down the road a bit farther…

…Some but not all seemingly small moves turn out to be momentous, for good or ill.
And i don’t usually get to know which ahead of time.

…I can’t compute a percentage of an unknown number.
In other words, pondering how to spend the number of days i might have left is hampered by not being privy to that figure.

…Unlike my trip to the airport, any life map i purport to go by keeps needing to be redrawn as i go.

…Missing a lane change isn’t as bad as i feared.
There’s usually place up ahead to get back on track.
It might take extra time, i might even miss my flight, but, well, see the above take-aways.

As it happens, the past several weeks have brought about a few unanticipated medical and financial detours. But nothing close to the level of difficulties of a few years ago, just faint echoes.

Those reverberations, along with the seven-year reminder, nudge me to pause, take a good look around, and then pull way up to get the drone view, a fresh aerial perspective.

From up here, it’s easier to see the layout.
And it looks like things are going to be alright.