Live your potential

Achievements

As this annus horribilis draws to its close, I find myself reflecting on the meaning of achievement.

Since moving down to Wiltshire seven years ago, my career focus has changed. The move was for the kids, for schools, for space. We could ensure that we'd be present parents who could drop the children off and pick them up from school every day, we could sit with them as they did their homework. Life was very different in London, where long hours in after-school clubs were the norm.

We want to keep that balance, without using au pairs or other childcare. This means that it's not possible for me to work full-time, and it's far less likely for me to have a glittering career. Like the many (usually) mothers who choose to take part-time employment, the rewards are different, more internal rather than out in the world.

I still want to make a difference. I still want to have an impact. But I need to remember that I can measure my achievements in a different way.

Silence

I've not written here for a long time and my absence has been commented upon. It's been a strange few weeks. I've felt a real loss of purpose and direction. I've been feeling as if I have little to say and have retreated inwards. Though this has become a slightly self-fulfilling prophecy in a way - the less I say, the less I have to say. I have shrunk. But let me state some facts:

I've been rowing intensely, three times a week for the last eight weeks. My final session was last Friday and I reckon I've crossed the Channel more than four times, racking up a total of some 140 kilometres. Fitter, faster.

I've started working for a local domestic violence project, fundraising for them a couple of days a week. It's wonderful to be part of an office environment again, to have the routine of going to work on a regular basis, to be part of a team.

I'm hating the cold. I feel so disabled.

I'm not looking forward to Christmas, my first without the kids, my first since I moved out.

Those are some facts. The feelings are confused. I feel as if I'm in a state of change and uncertainty. I wonder what I'm achieving. I think of what I achieved before my injury.

But perhaps that's the solution to my questions: there are no answers. Or at least they'll be a long time coming. So I could try accepting the uncertainty rather than fighting it. I could try accepting my lack of fluency rather than struggling to find the right words. Maybe that would be an achievement in itself.