The Best Laid Plans

“The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft a-gley.” Robert Burns

Sometimes the best laid plans go awry.

As some of you know, I was summoned for a visit by my mother during this past week. I went, fully intending to be able to get the blog article done during that time away.

As a side note, this is why I do not like the word “intention”. I intended to write the article, but it didn’t get done, in spite of my intentions. But more on that another day…

It was a very difficult week. My mother is much more frail than I had expected. I will probably be making another trip back there – a final trip – in the next year. She is doing the best she can, and that doesn’t always extend to things that I would hope for.

In spite of all those difficulties, I was able to exorcise some ghosts from my past. Gone are some of the perceptions of past events. Gone is the tiny sense of longing for “home”. Gained is the ability to see more clearly the person I was as well as the person I have become.

It was a week of serious and often painful personal growth.

One of the things that I have been developing as part of my goal of deliberate living is a sense of self-care. And that means that sometimes I have to put my well-being first. So I took the week to do a lot of thinking, writing and talking to safe friends. Processing the information coming at me. And it was helpful.

But it didn’t get the planned article written. So here we are, Monday has arrived, and instead of my intended (there’s that word again) article on wrangling inputs for getting household things done, I am looking at something completely different.

I will ask you, my readers, to consider if you need a bit of self care right now. The past year has been extremely difficult for everyone on the planet. Are you still soldiering on? Or have you taken time to think and feel and process? I understand if you haven’t; but I will suggest that all of us should take a bit of time this week and practice some self-care, in whatever form it may come.