Same Desk - Different View

I had a wonderful life in Shropshire: great house and garden, friends and family, lovely little village school, everything I needed. However, it did not stop me feeling restless every time someone I knew moved house. There was a part of me that envied them. The process of clearing out the clutter, streamlining your way of living and starting over somewhere different is without doubt cathartic and renewing. I did not exactly need renewal but 'that part' of me craved it.

Then it happened. After half hearted complaining about his dissatisfaction with his career and equally half hearted attempts to remedy this, my husband found the door to a new future that had been eluding him and pretty much kicked it down and walked through in less time, it felt, than it took me to write this sentence.

We had reached a fork in the road and we were taking the direction signposted '?'.

I would be giving up a lot to follow my husband down this unknown path but it is testament to my total trust in him that I never doubted (and of course there was 'that part' of me that was more than a little satisfied)

The new job was at an independent school and the deal was that we would be living in school owned accommodation and our two young children would be educated there. A huge focus of our life would be within the little bubble that is the school. I am the first to admit that this particular bubble is a very inspiring and exciting one but it would take a leap of faith to embrace it and make it work for all of us as a family.

My husband is totally committed to the school, its ethos, the people and the difference he feels he can make there. The children only really needed to put on their school uniforms to feel their sense of belonging and that sense has grown with each passing day as they make friends and achieve milestones in their education and development. I have been made welcome by the community and although I have yet to find a purpose for myself beyond supporting my husband and children (and that is a full time job as any mum knows!) I am happy here. We are making a life... and a good one.

I am sitting at the same desk I always sat at to compose my blog posts. I am surrounded by familiar things but  in new orientations and settings. The shape of my day is not as it was. I gaze out of a window that did not exist in my old office and I see a different view. Have I stayed the same or am I different?

I have shed so many layers: possessions, habits (good and bad), comfortable routines. I do feel lighter. This is a wonderful opportunity to live life the way we want to, to let the new layers settle with mindfulness and knowledge of past experience... to learn from old mistakes.

There was once a time, many years ago, when I thought all that was left for my future was to watch my little chicks fly away and wait patiently for death. How wrong I was.