I was writing to a friend today and sharing some thoughts on the difficulty of breaking out of my virtual ‘egg’ and starting over.  What am I meant to be doing with my time and my life these days?  Who am I now that I’m no longer half a partnership.  Like all parents, we had realised that we were entering that phase where our children would soon be flying the nest and we were looking forward to that in many ways, and, hopefully, also to the fruits of their new nests too.  I was ready for that change, but not the one that happened, but that is the the thing about Change, you often don’t choose it, but you have to deal with it none-the-less.  So most of last year was spent dealing with the various after-shocks of Carys’s death and now is the time to begin once more, but saying that is easy.  What is much harder is saying what I should begin. 

I know I am not alone in this dilemma; everyone who has been made redundant or lost a significant other knows this question.  Being well versed in this area does not necessarily help me either.  I know what I want to achieve, but not really how to approach it.  It is a bit like Gandhi saying “I want to free India”, but that doesn’t take you very far on its own.

The thing is we tend to wrap up who we are with what we do so much that it is very hard to disentangle them.  Think about it… I go to the office each day so I’m a businessman; I ride a bike so I’m a biker etc.  But if I stop visiting the office, am I still a businessman, if I sell my bike am I still a biker?  It reminds me of the question we used to be asked when we we were little “What do you want to be when you grow up?”  Mid-fifties feels a little late to be asking this same question! 

I suppose it is a bit like someone like Jonny Wilkinson coming back to the game after a long injury.  Do you play the same game the same way as before, or do you change your strategy?  Maybe you don’t need to place yourself in harms way every Saturday any longer?  I suspect he might have found these questions a little easier to answer than I do.

After yesterdays little debacle, this morning I started working through my list of people to call and was delighted by the results of my first two calls and their reaction at hearing from me after all this time.  One step at a time and follow your nose seems to be the only way forward for me…

The same friend I referred to at the beginning said that the first two weeks of the new year were a kind of no-mans land where we drifted in a nether world between two years and in this foggy uncertain place we should be open to possibilities and allowing the possibilities to unfold.  In the meantime, I’m trying to work out if I am an ex-egg or new chicken…. or indeed a future egg-producer?!

“Man’s role is uncertain, undefined, and perhaps unnecessary.”   Margaret Mead