Junebug on a String

Yesterday, J sent me a link to this chart of the past decade in icons.

I can. not. beLIEVE that it’s been ten years since some of this stuff.  This whole past decade has gone by like a blur.  Some of it feels like it just happened yesterday, despite the fact that sometimes it feels like things are moving at a snail’s pace.  I was twenty-eight ten years ago.  I remember feeling like thirty was fast approaching, and then I’d have to grow up and get serious, because who could be thirty and still be bumbling around trying to find a place in life?

Ahem.  Apparently, the same can be said for forty.  Good heavens.

Ten years ago, I was in southern California, drawing pictures of palm trees, writing books and gearing up to teach classes, and I had a *plan*.  A five-year plan.  A five-year plan that I threw out the window to move to Seattle on a dime (which, really, was the best thing I ever did), and which facilitated a brand-new five-year plan.

I didn’t count on five years going all wonkified and landing me in the midwest again with a broken knee and a broken heart, but life’s weird like that.  Everything for a reason, and apparently, that reason was to drop Lime in my lap and tie us together forever.  (She’s the best friend I’ve ever had, and for good reason.)

If anyone had told me, ten years ago, that today I’d be sitting in North Carolina, on a purple bed, putting together packages of hand-crafted perfume to go to people all over the world, and talking mostly-weekly to a huge audience about knitting…?  I’d have giggled and thrown a glu-stick at them.  I’m an artist and a writer, stupid, I’d have said.  I don’t even LIKE perfume.  And I don’t know how to knit.

Ah, the sweet life’s path.  How you twist and turn.

*  *  *

Speaking of time — I sat down last night and got to the section of my planning where I do the actual scheduling of stuff.  All the lists are made for each of the projects in the pike, and now it’s a matter of deciding when that pike needs to be opened.

I figure I can sleep around January 3rd or so.  Until then, even breathing is on a strict time schedule.  We’re talking fifteen-minute increments here, and I’m still choked with Teh Busy until at LEAST the 3rd, and after a brief respite to catch my breath, it’s on to the next huge thing from the 4th to the 15th, then ANOTHER bit of crazy from the 15th to the 30th.

Then things start to even out.  To be fair, this Crazee is from the move this Fall, and all the subsequent downtime and cocooning.  That’s the big problem with having a lot of ideas, and a lot of good ideas, going all at once — any little ding in the schedule and it throws everything off into a whirlwind, and if it’s a big ding…well…you don’t get to sleep until the third of January.

Thing is…despite the busy, and all the crazee that comes with it, I really do love my life.  The crazee makes me focus a lot more clearly on the little moments inbetween the activity, where the Good Stuff happens.  The emails from people who love what they get.  The phone calls and texts from friends.  The quiet moments where one of the dogs comes and lays his/her head in my lap and just looks cute as the dickens.  You get a chance, when things are nuts, to really test the Important Stuff(tm) in your life — to see who stands by you, to find out what’s important, to see where you have a chance to grow and change for the better.

It’s during the times of deliberation that you get to stretch your mind.  It’s during the times of action, though, where you get to test your mettle.