Doing. Not Thinking. Doing.

I don’t think there is anything I’m more inclined to derisory snarkiness over than people ‘talking the talk but not walking the walk’, people who talk about plans and hopes and dreams who never actually put them into practise or get further than saying they want to do something, be something, achieve something.

I’ve realised I’m perilously close to becoming exactly that. I used to be such a do-er; I set up groups and made holidays happen and built websites and businesses and all sorts of things, home educated, wrote, made, crafted, planned and did.

And now I don’t.

I’m not saying there isn’t good reason, the last 7 years have been a massive, draining and exhausting rollercoaster but now, hopefully at the end of that, I’m irritated at what I’m becoming.

I said to some friends the other day that most of my online endeavours are a ‘monument to my lack of completer finisher gene’; I’m an entrepreneur, that’s true, an ideas person and a creator, but I lack sticking power. I only get through pregnancies because they last 9 months (not too long to be boring) and children (mostly) just don’t go away so you have to keep feeding them and BeadMerrily (which amazingly is ten years old) is still a business because Max organised it into being one and let me take time off.

And the truth is I do stick at things fairly well these days but I am lacking something. I’m lacking the energy to change my stars. I’m lacking the omphf to put a sparkle back into our life.

Most of my friends know I’ve wanted to move to Devon for ten years. Circumstances mean it hasn’t happened (it nearly did, once) and now I’m horribly conscious that the possibility is drifting ever further away. Fran doesn’t want to move away from what she loves here and I don’t have the heart to make her. Several big business changes this year and over our last traumatic 3 years have made the finances just not add up to doing so, the housing market would not be kind either. Any accusation that I talk it but don’t walk it would be well justified.

And I lack the heart to force my family to do things because I want them any more; after all, I wanted another baby and that was a long and painful ride for us all, even if ultimately a more or less happy ending.

Max and I promised ourselves we would not live in this drab, dull and dreary town for 20 years but that is fast approaching. We’re damned if we are going to live here another 20 though. And I can live with a planned out, situation improving 3 or 5 years more, if I know the dream is getting closer. I just don’t want the next two optimum ‘between exams and school changes’ moments to slide by in another rash of ‘if only we could’ sighs.

I really want a different life. I really know I have it in me to change things. I really know that I can sell it to the girls who will still be here, so long as I can make it a viable life for them to live. I really know that Max and I are smart enough to make it work But it is no good talking about it. I’m going to have to do it.

A life that looks like this… is probably going to mean an awful lot less taking it easy the way this version of me does. I’m going to have to find the old Merry. I bloody well hope she is still there.