First, let me just say HOLY COW!! WRITING ONLY 23 WORDS IS A CHALLENGE!!

There. Got that off my chest!

I was thinking about Sabbaths and how we need to take breaks — regular breaks — from hard things. There’s discipline and then there are nutso compulsions. I work at a gym, so I see a lot of those people who are very disciplined about their training, but I also see people who compulsively overtrain to a point where it’s pretty unhealthy.

Writing 23 words is not unhealthy. It’s hard, though! But I decided that I would be disciplined about it six days a week and on the seventh I would blather. Uncontrollably blather. And use Linda Hill’s Stream of Consciousness (SoCS) writing prompt as my excuse.

Today’s prompt: “out of the box.” This isn’t really an out of the box story, but it’s the first thing that came to my mind so I’m going to run with it.

Over the last few weeks I have found myself.

I know that sounds ridiculously pop-psychology 1980s, but when you’ve lost yourself and found yourself again, it’s kind of amazing.

For my regular readers, remember when I wrote this post: What’s Your Goal? I was incredibly frustrated by someone trying to help me by asking me about my goals. I was too lost in the darkness of a deep forest of I-don’t-know-what to even understand that question.

Fast forward to maybe two weeks ago.

No wait — in the intervening time — about 9 months — I took on some new duties with my job. I’m helping bring some senior programming to the facility where I work. To do that, I’ve been working with a woman who has been running a senior program at another location. This past Thursday, January 5, was the big day of inviting seniors in for an Open House.

Like I said, leading up to it, I’ve been meeting regularly with a woman who has been doing this job elsewhere. We’ve discussed rooms to hold events and places to store materials. We’ve discussed personnel to be involved and practical safety issues for the population we’ll be working with. It’s all been so good.

Then the lightbulb went on a couple weeks ago. I was talking to one of my daughters about it, about a few ideas I had. Specifically, I said, “We should have a ‘Bird’ month of programming. We could have one of the artists lead an art project involving birds. We could maybe build some birdhouses, We could have someone speak on backyard birding and ways to attract birds.”

I was on a roll and getting excited as the ideas started to flow. “We could go out birding. We could get out the badminton nets if people wanted to hit the birdie back and forth.”

“Mom,” my daughter said, “this is what you do.”

And she was so right. I’m an idea person.

That free flow of ideas had been so stuffed in for so long, for so many reasons.

Not everyone likes idea people. One of the people I work with is an idea-shutter-downer. “Stay in your lane,” she said to me when I made suggestions.

Truly I have been clogged.

Out of the box may not be the right term for what I’m feeling.

Maybe out of the dark forest. Or out of a hole.

I feel alive again. The Open House was a HUGE success.

What’s my goal? To use my unique giftedness to serve other people. I LOVE doing that. Now I have an outlet for it with the senior programs where I work.