My ‘forward motion’ (in life) seems to have stalled of late.

I don’t feel I am in a posi­tion to com­plain to my friends – just about every­one had one trau­ma or anoth­er last month alone, with a cou­ple more com­ing up this month! 

But I do need to feel I am mov­ing for­ward with my life. Spend­ing the day with a friend who recent­ly had surgery on her right wrist fol­low­ing a head-on car crash made me feel bet­ter and use­ful. Of course she is dev­as­tat­ed because she teach­es violin!

I real­ly like doing good things for good peo­ple; it’s real­ly very sat­is­fy­ing. I grow impa­tient with peo­ple who have a lot going for them and still com­plain about their ‘stress’ – but who am I to say what degree of stress is worse than mine?

My dis­ad­van­tage is that my most intense and obvi­ous stress was 8 years ago. The cheer­ful dis­po­si­tion of our fam­i­ly belies our ongo­ing stress­es. As anoth­er friend remarked to me the oth­er day “you don’t have any stress” – thanks for telling me that!! 

I do tell my friends who’ve had surgery that no one will pity them 3 months from now if they do too much imme­di­ate­ly post-op – they need to pace them­selves in the ear­ly days. Been there, done that.

Do I spend too much time try­ing to get every­one else in my life mov­ing for­ward? Prob­a­bly. I do feel pro­duc­tive when some­one of any age (from birth to almost 101 is now my age group for care!) has a cheer­ful day or few hours with me.

But to what use can I put such abil­i­ties? There doesn’t seem to be a way to earn a liv­ing doing such things.

Per­haps today is just one of those exhaust­ing ‘down’ days one has now and again. I am com­ing off a very intense month in Eng­land with my moth­er and then get­ting a cold (which last­ed more than two weeks) on my return. Cou­ple that with my var­i­ous friends and fam­i­ly who have had surgery and I’ve been some­what preoccupied.

Now it’s Octo­ber. We have busy months ahead. Birth­days and anniver­saries to cel­e­brate in the next two months and Trinida­di­an black cake to make! 

Per­haps I could best move for­ward by soak­ing the fruit to make black cake? Now there’s a thought! The won­der­ful ‘perfume’ of fruit soak­ing in cher­ry brandy – you have to stir it near­ly every day!

I think per­haps that will take me for­ward this week. Then I can look for­ward to our bar­ber­shop har­mo­ny week­end and after that our friends from Trinidad will be in town – lots of laugh­ter to anticipate!

I think I feel bet­ter already!

Onward!