Now What?

The recital is over.  There’s nothing to practice or rehearse.  There will be no classes for a few weeks.  During the past year I was motivated, almost obsessed, with belly dance, my newfound hobby.  It was exciting to work toward a goal:  to dance in the year-end performance. 

I sweated and struggled and pushed myself.  And I achieved my goal.  I plan to keep dancing.  But now I find myself looking around wondering where to go next.  I’m experiencing that let-down feeling that often happens after a goal is accomplished.  Now what?

In the first few days after the recital I relaxed and celebrated, in my own way.  I ate a lot of bad stuff.  I baked a batch of chocolate chip cookies and ate most of them (one of those refrigerated, break-off-little-squares-and-bake-them deals – not the whole batch you make with semi-sweet chocolate morsels.)  I dined on Mexican food:  enchiladas, a chile relleno, greasy bean-and-cheese nachos.  I’ve had pizza, even steak.  I’ve gobbled down potato chips and banana pudding with vanilla wafers.  And I’ve eaten those treats late at night, which for me means after 9 p.m. 

I took a lot of naps. 

I did some good junk reading. 

Not that any of those things are bad, but I did very little that was practical or useful, like grocery shopping or making beds or doing laundry.  (We’re in a drought.  I was saving water.) 

But now it's time to go back to normalcy.  It’s time to think about my next goal.  What will that be?

Yesterday I found myself inside one of those gigantic Super HEBs.  Usually I avoid such places, but it was near the PetSmart where I had just returned something.  I went in to buy a half gallon of milk and on the way wandered into the school supplies aisle.  Spiral notebooks of all colors filled the shelves.  And get this--they were on sale for 20 cents each.  I love spiral notebooks.  Maybe it’s the allure of the blank page, the possibilities lying dormant there, the invitation to fill those pages up.  I bought ten of them.  I think it’s a sign my subconscious is sending me. 

I've been writing this blog for over six months. It’s established a discipline and a writing routine. It’s been great practice. But I want to do something more substantial, maybe even (dare I say it?) meaningful. The hard part is choosing a topic. It’s not that I can’t think of something to write about. The problem is there are too many things I’m interested in, and it's so hard to narrow it down to just one. The temptation is to have two or three writing projects going at once. But I have a feeling that won’t work well.  So, step one:  I'm going to jump into those spiral notebooks and brainstorm.

Last year was the year to dance. Maybe this will be the year to write.