Oftentimes my subconscious doesn't talk to my conscious. It's as if they are living in the same world but experiencing completely different things. As an example, let's take a peak inside my head from this past Thanksgiving:
Conscious Lucy (CL): Wow! All this food is so delicious!
Unconscious Lucy (UL): Something is wrong here...
CL: I think I saved space for dessert, yum!
UL: I can't breathe
CL: I'll start taking dishes to the kitchen.
UL: RUN AWAY!!!
And about at that moment enough of UL seeped into CL that I did abruptly leave the group and, without saying a word to anyone, disappeared into the kitchen to clean up by myself. Yup, another classic Thanksgiving story! Thankfully my family hasn't held my behavior against me but what just happened???
Since selling the house on November 4th and driving away the same day we have been in a state of disarray, excitement, and confusion. I've slept a lot (no really, a lot and I still looked tired), got a cold, laughed, cried, and cycled from one emotion to the next at lightening speed.
On Thanksgiving it all came to a head when every fiber of my being realized that after this Thanksgiving there was no going home to Colorado. There is no going back, only forward. At first this realization pulled me down into deep and longing sadness--grief--I suppose.
The thing is, I had been grieving all year. Really ever since we started getting the house ready to sell and I tearfully painted plain, boring white paint over my mural in our master bedroom. I cried a little, or a lot, every day from that moment in April until November we arrived at the family farm in Missouri. I told myself, that was enough crying! I won't cry any more! And I haven't cried (much) since, but when it hit that there was no going back to Colorado I experienced a whole new level of suffering.
Thankfully, at the same time I was reading a sailing book entitled, "Blown Away" by Herb Payson chronicling his sailing adventures in the 1970's. He briefly talked how they let go of the last vestiges of land life without even knowing it by going swimming in a swimming pool. That's when it hit me. All my fantasies of carrying forward the things I liked about my life in Colorado were fantasies. I had to stop looking backward and start moving forward into creating our new, uncharted, life. (duh, right???)
I kept reading and Herb often talks about the burden of navigating via sextant without anyone else there to share in that responsibility and another realization hit me. Rob and I are partners in this. If I keep looking backwards and longing for what we had I won't be able to help him--and us--in our new life. I need to buck up and start pulling my weight as we move into the future.
So now when we talk about our next steps I look for things I can do like researching how we can create a domicile so we can still vote, pay taxes, and be a legal citizen in the US. And, as we look for a pull-behind camper, instead of dragging my feet I'm taking more interest and am willing to drive long distances to see campers (if you know me, you know I don't like road trips so this is a biggie!). Plus I've started looking seriously at the different tasks on a sailboat and thinking about which ones I will take ownership of--weather, navigation, provisioning, research, etc.
I was feeling overwhelmed and unmotivated. Now, at least, I'm feeling overwhelmed and motivated. Hey, it's a start! :-)