After the Crash: Getting Unstuck and Back on Track

I haven't written in awhile. Months, in fact. Almost a whole year.

::sigh::

I know. I know.

I thought about taking the blog offline, but that seemed defeatist. I thought about taking it in one of several dozen different directions, but I couldn't dredge up the energy it would take to completely reconfigure and reinvent the thing.

For awhile, I thought laziness was the culprit. But I think the real problem was The Rut.

As in "I was seriously stuck in..."

For months, I explored pursuing several things, including starting my own publishing company, only to feel that I was doing nothing more than spinning my wheels and getting more and more stuck.

Recently, I came to the conclusion that now is Not The Time. I'm a single parent and an only child. The last thing I want to do right now is be the sole person responsible for One More Thing.

I had a conversation along these lines with one of my dear clients, a wonderful woman whose book deserves to be in print. "Do you feel like you're in Limbo?" she asked.

Yep. That's it exactly.

"It's ok," she said. "I've been there. The thing about Limbo is, it's only for a season. It's not permanent, though it may seem like forever when you're in it. But, like any season, it will pass and you'll come out the other side better and wiser for having gone through it."

I have the *BEST* clients. Just sayin'.

Her words were exactly what I needed to hear. They gave me the oomph I needed to slog on, to push forward, to keep reaching out in the hopes that I'd make some sort of progress.

Maybe they're what you need to hear, too.

If so, take them to heart, take them to soul, and make good use of them. Hopefully, you won't have to experience an in-your-face moment with your own mortality to further hammer home this truth, as I did.

Here's what happened:

Yesterday, Dad and I were at our Township Hall to vote in Michigan's presidential primary. We stopped by on our way to lunch and were surprised at how few people there were waiting to vote. Yes! No lines! W00t!

I voted and was waiting for the clerks to get Dad's paperwork finished when --

KA-BOOOM!

The building shook as if hit with a massive explosion. The wall buckled. Wood splintered. Bricks flew. The table that held voting materials shot across the walkway. In all honesty, at first I thought a bomb had gone off. Especially when the initial BOOM was followed by an ominous high-pitched whine.

It wasn't a bomb.

It was a car. Embedded in the wall, with the grille poking into the voting area. That whine was the accelerator still revving.

Had it happened only a minute or two earlier, it would have likely smacked into both Dad and me. As it was, we were all supremely fortunate that no one -- including the driver -- was seriously injured. In fact, she said she intended to vote, just as soon as she had spoken with her insurance company.

As the dust settled, I helped to move some of the larger pieces of drywall to clear a path so we could get out and future voters could come in.

Adrenaline ran rather high as Dad and I went off to lunch at El Asadero. (It takes more than a little car crash to keep us away from Taco Tuesday.)

By the time our food had arrived, word of the accident had gotten around. (It's a small town. News spreads like wildfire.)


By the time we finished eating and headed home, the wreck had been cleared, the wall was in the process of being patched, and voting was continuing.

It does no one any good to dwell on the damage that's been done. What matters is not the Bad Stuff that happened. Rather, what matters is clearing away the debris and doing The Thing that needs done.

In the aftermath of the wall crash, I found myself energized. "Inspired" isn't quite the right word, but neither is "stuck" any more.

So I'm going to do my best to clear the debris, tow away the things that are blocking progress, and continue to press forward. The plan is to update things here regularly -- once a week at least, probably on Sundays. Definitely more than once a year.

If you're stuck in a similar rut: onward and upward!

With any luck, this season will soon be history. Here's to pushing ahead and getting back on track.