Standing Still

Standstill: a state characterized by absence of motion or of progress {Merriam-Webster Dictionary}

We have been on a two-week holiday!  Wahey!  It was great! We went to France and stayed with Tloml’s Mother.  An exceedingly splendid place to go, with loads of room for the children to play – a swimming pool in which the kiddies spent more than half their waking hours. My hubby and the kids loved it.  I, on the other hand, did not get into it even once as I have a thing against getting my hair wet!

I had just begun to talk myself round as the temperature was in the high 30s (Celsius) when the weather cooled down a little.   So I had to go back to the start of the self-talk and then it was THAT time of the month so hey… it just never happened.

I still enjoyed myself thoroughly, even though I was different from everyone else.  I was hardly seen without my laptop on my lap!  Yep, I was on holiday but for me, it meant my hubby was around a lot of the time so I had a bit more time to gather my thoughts and plan a little for the months to come when life returned to its fairly crazy pace with homeschooling, parenting, looking after the house, business and work.

And now life is beginning to return to the norm – I spent a lot of yesterday cleaning the house as every time I go somewhere new – well, not really new as it is home but I have been away for 2 weeks so therefore it is slightly new – I have to clean up around me in order for me to feel at home again.  (Yes, I have my own special weirdness!)

Anyway, to the topic at hand…

Standing Still

This evening while at a meeting, I got to thinking about standing still or not as the case may be.  There have been times in my life when I have felt that I am not really going anywhere.  Everyday, I would wake and do exactly the same things in exactly the same way and then go to bed and wake up the next day and do exactly the same again.  Now, for me this is a death-inducing way to live so I can never stay in this zone for too long before I am longing for something new to happen.

However, there are times when we can feel trapped in this place of ‘standing still’.

Our whole life is a blur of nothingness. There is no joy or passion or anything, there is just survival.  Sometimes, we are not even aware of it, we just stay in this place because it is comfortable.  We forget all the things we used to dream about when we were young because those were youthful dreams and now we are more mature and we know that life has to be lived a certain, boring way or so we think…

But where is the joy in that?

Or maybe, like Rapunzel in [amazon_link id=”B004E10JD4″ target=”_blank” container=”” container_class=”” ]Disney’s Tangled[/amazon_link], we are waiting for our lives to begin.  (I love that movie!).  Maybe, we have children and feel we should stop our lives for a while as we dedicate our time to them – Very noble indeed but what if deep down inside, we resent them for the choice we feel forced to make.

Now, as a Mum that is determined to KNOW my kids and Spend more time with them than anyone else while they are young, I am not saying ‘Go off and find yourself away from your kids’ or anything drastic like that.  I am happy enough to slow down and take them with me on the journey.  But I MUST be going on a journey.

I cannot keep standing still.

I still remember a sermon preached by Tloml a while ago now, sometime before we had kids, he talked on the fact that we need to keep moving even if we go in the wrong direction because it is easier to be redirected if you are moving but how can you change the direction of a stationary car?

It is just stuck and going nowhere.

People sometimes say ‘Ready, Fire, Aim!’ and I like that too because sometimes people get stuck in the ready-ing phase and nothing happens because they are trying so hard to aim in the right direction but unless you are gifted with a perfect vision of the future, how can you know completely where to aim?

As you start to move forward, you pick up skills and knowledge you would never have had standing still and this new knowledge helps you aim better for the next step.  A change in direction of half a degree could make a world of difference to your results but you would not have known that without first moving, taking that first step.

Recently, I have spoken to a lot of people about various things and they ask me questions like

‘Should I home school my Kids?  I am unhappy with school but am not certain I can do any better’

‘How can I reach my goals when I have little ones at home?’

‘How do you fit everything in?’

Thoughts like this keep us standing still. I can be a very fearful character at times so I have been known to think these thoughts and worse ones on occasion. And when I get tired, I can be depressing to be around but it never lasts because I cannot allow it to.  Of course, Tloml may beg to differ as he has to live with my moods – the poor chap! 🙂

The only difference between any of these people and I is that I chose to keep moving forward.  I may make big mistakes but then I have big wins too.  I have done sooo much more than the average person from being a rock singer to teaching to property investing and more; I still feel there is so much more to experience.

Anyway, enough for now.  Lets Keep moving forward!

What do you say? Is it time to stop standing still and move forward?

In life you’ll always fall & through each one of those falls you’ll learn something new. But always remember when you fall, learn to always pick your ass back up & move on.

 Sharlee Alcivar

I decided to enter a holiday Blog Hop