Starting

"The challenge, it turns out, isn't in perfecting your ability to know when to start and when to stand by.  The challenge is getting into the habit of starting." - Seth Godin
I have been thinking  a lot about starting over the last two weeks.  Being away from the constant grind can give a man a great deal of clarity, if it is used correctly.

I guess what started me down this road was the rather simple thought of deciding that I was going to train in Japan in 2016.  Pretty unlike me.  What flowed from that rather simple mental decision was a series of things that would need to be in place in order for me to do it:  funding (a big part, of course), time off, ensuring that everything I usually would do will be taken care of, etc.  In other words, I had to start planning for the future.

That simple act got me started on thinking about the overall state of my life at the moment- not that it is bad - far from it - but rather that it is a sort of "here and now" existence.  I have ongoing projects and know the things I want to do, but looking out to where I eventually would like to be - even in the short term - is not something I am terribly good at by any stretch of the imagination.  I am not sure why - it is almost as if I treated it as something which was this terribly complex process that needed to be dealt with when in fact the thing simply starts with a decision.  And then the work begins.

That simple little exercise has started my mind running down lines I had not expected.  Things like what I really want to be doing in five years.  Where I want to be or not be in ten years.  How much effort I put into where I am now versus putting it towards where I want to be in the future.

Everything almost has the cast of being new again.  Lots of things suddenly have the cast of being in my control.  All from the simple act of making a mental decision to start.

It is great to discover that such things are still out there for me waiting to be found.