Kerri On Down The Road

 Last week was a biggie - I wrote my last exam, putting a bow on one more semester of school.  This past one was a doozy, and although I have felt moments of overwhelm and uncertainty in the past, I felt much more challenged over the past four months than I have before.  In the weeks leading up to my finals, I started to feel a sense of the reality of the decisions I've made in my life over the past couple of years, and knew that moving forward meant doubling down and accepting the discomfort that this change was bringing up. I found the timing of this reckoning to be interesting - it's been just over two years since I made the decision to leave the long-standing career that had shaped and defined my life (and in part my identity).  One would think that staring down that fork in the road would lead to uncertainty about next steps and future outcomes, but it didn't.  When I made the call to "retire" from my job, I felt a deep knowing, like I was finally admitting...

When I was younger, I loved reading Choose Your Own Adventure stories; having the ability to decide how the story turned out as the reader felt exciting, and I also loved the ability to go back and choose again when things didn't go as I had hoped.  Every now and then, while I'm working at the library, I hear young readers mentioning these books, and I feel a sense of nostalgia take over. What strikes me the most about the enjoyment of those books was the fluidity of choice they offered.  The knowledge that there was more than one way the story could go, and you could explore all of the options because there was no wrong answer.  As I have gotten older, that feeling of expansiveness has slowly been reduced:  choices have felt more cemented, and the idea of going back to try again has felt more daunting. Sure, I have made some big changes in my life over the years, especially in the last decade, and I'm now in a place that I didn't even know existed not that long ago....

Going back to school later in life and juggling studies with work and regular day-to-day demands has taught me the importance of managing expectations.  And the hardest ones to manage, I find, are my own.  The expectations I place on myself are much more rigorous and demanding than anything anyone in my life would place on me, and that is likely because it is so much easier for us to be our own harshest critics and judges.   When I first started school, I set an expectation for myself to aim for straight As throughout my undergrad.  I managed to earn "good grades" in high school and started my undergrad journey with similar marks, much to my surprise and delight.  Then the inevitable happened...I fell short of the mark, and did it ever sting.  That sense of failure, the knowledge that this standard I had been imposing on myself was not going to become a reality, and there was nothing I could do to change that.  I mean, I guess I could have gone ba...

 As hard as it was to watch my eldest prepare to leave and start the next chapter of his life, it allowed me to watch a life transition in process.  Being able to see the trees while standing in the forest provided a perspective on how one can effectively manage change without becoming overwhelmed by the sheer volume of decisions and choices that need to be made.  What struck me from the start was how he prioritized and determined what needed to happen, and then simply did the thing.  It can be so easy to get caught up in minutiae and uncontrollables while navigating through a transition period.  I have often found myself falling victim to "analysis paralysis," which brings any and all forward motion to a grinding halt. At the same time, I wrestle with small (and often most insignificant) details.  It can feel like I am doing meaningful work as I busy myself with these plans, only to realize later on that I could have made much more headway had I focused on...