That feeling: the skin-too-tight, heart-too-fast, want-to-scream-and-holler feeling I get when I have to wait but can’t. By can’t I mean I will wait but not without my body staging a protest. Patience is a virtue but not one that I possess most of the time. I am able to conjure up this elusive quality when working with kids and when needed as a counterbalance to my ants-in-his-pants husband, but that’s about it.

So it’s been a strange week. I would have thought I would be dancing around the house, grateful to have hour after hour of time spent dictated by my own needs and those of 7-month old Elias. Not so much. This week became a family staycation, and that has meant all of us spending time together at the zoo, pool and various other outside events. It really has been fun, but I’ve had to come to terms with this change of plans as this was not what I had anticipated.

This was going to be my business plan week. I was going to do for that all-important document what I have not yet been able to do for my dissertation which is prioritize it above all else until it’s done and excellently so. I know from my experience with my dissertation that thirty-minute blocks here and there are more frustrating than productive: it takes so long to get in that head space that allows me to block everything else out. It feels like jumping on a moving train almost – and working up to the speed needed to launch myself on board is both exhilarating and exhausting.

[Alert: metaphor switching back to original, overarching metaphor] So tomorrow, it’s on. This car, which has been in neutral and spreading the exhaust of the idle, will now be circling the neighborhood until I can get a handle on this business plan. But I believe in the power of momentum. It might be a bit like creating a map while on the road, but many explorers did just that, no?