Daryl Wood's Blog

At a rare lunch out last week my friend remarked that so far I am 100% successful at getting through the tough days. I have said that same thing to others but when she said it to me, it felt a wee bit heavy. Heavy because I knew that some of those days felt impossible to manage at the time. And other days were still very hard with only little bits of what I think was joy in them.

What this reminded me of was how often I/we default to negative thoughts. When the forecast is for 40% chance of rain we tend to overlook the fact that it means 60% chance of NO RAIN. Whoever says that? We always talk about the 40%, 50%, 60% chance of whatever. Where I live on Lake Huron it is so unpredictable that any percentage is usually a wild guess. How might we go about our day if we focused on the positive potential instead of being dragged down by the negative ‘what ifs’?

So noticing that I have achieved a 100% mark is actually pretty phenomenal considering how many days I wanted out of this nightmare. When I look closer, besides surviving what will be 10 weeks tomorrow I have also accomplished a lot. All the leftover food boxes and medical supplies have been donated. Excess furnishings needed for support are gone. Endless streams of paperwork has been completed and new systems in place for everyday functioning. My sewing machine has been revived and I am almost adept at moving the trickle charger between batteries once a week.

Success looks so different now and small incremental movements are being celebrated. I wonder if having my world shrink so drastically has given me an opportunity to consider what success will mean to me in the future. When we are busy with our daily lives it’s easy to keep the momentum going without giving a second look at what all that busyness is about. I would much rather have had an easier pathway to pausing but this is what I got. Would I have slowed down long enough to consider the possibilities if it weren’t such a dramatic change? Would any of us?