real thing

My thinking is very scattered tonight, so please bear with me if I bounce around.

I realized something about myself tonight as I talked with a friend over dinner. I have never made any long-range plans for my life. I've always just kind of survived, flown-by the seat of my pants and did whatever came down the road to do. Planning and executing this trip to Italy is the most long-range thing I can think of that I have done. Isn't that strange? I'm such an organized person. But I'm always organizing the immediate. It's kind of like something I learned in a management training class today about the difference between managing and leading. Managing takes care of the day to day operations, and Leading is a long-range task, looking toward the goal and vision of the organization. It takes both to make a successful business and I would venture to say the same applies to making a successful life. I have been lacking in being the leader of my own life. I've let life, or fate or circumstances lead me.

And you want to know what's even stranger than that? At 46 years old I'm just recognizing that in myself?! How unaware does that make me? And here's another realization...I think I am so painfully unaware of so many aspects of myself because I don't talk enough. I know that sounds strange. But I am NOT a talker. In any group, I am the one who listens and asks questions about you. But I rarely talk about myself or share what's going on in my own life. I thought it was my way of protecting myself from others, hiding (unconsciously) my issues from the world. But maybe it was my way of hiding my issues from myself too. Without voicing them and talking with others, I keep myself unaware of so much about myself. Now I have a friend I have been able to really open up to, and it is creating this mirror in which I can see myself more clearly. Not sure if that's a good thing, but at least it's an honest thing. At least it's a real thing.

Maybe with a clearer picture of myself, I can see the world more clearly and create a plan to navigate my way through this journey instead of being carried along by the current of circumstances.