Unprepared

“This is a test, this is just a test…of your emergency broadcasting system”…I had that warning pop into my head as I resisted returning to my fully conscious mind in bed this morning.

Lately my carefully planned life, with all the promises dreamt as a newlywed, has gone awry. I’m not who I planned on becoming and neither are the people most immediately entangled along-side. The web remains unchanged regardless of the change in weather.  It doesn’t diminish, it doesn’t expand.  I crawl from one corner to another to inspect for damages and finding none, continue to the succeeding corner and so on.  Doomed to repeat…wishing I had wings instead of a spinner.

This not being a possibility, my present self is predominately living inside my mind rather than flourishing in the spaces about me.  Must change. Must progress… for the opposite (regress) is a guarantee of failure.

In that I must progress, the exams which follow the lessons in life, must also progress.  I hate that.

Presently the lesson on the chalkboard of my life is that old is approaching.  Middle age was hard enough, I can’t imagine the coursework looming ahead. Who will teach the lessons?  Is summer school available for remediation if the core lessons are too advanced?

How does one born into the generation of “what’s your sign, baby” continue the irresistible path of pseudo-Zen mindset when the psychedelic  road to nirvana has morphed into cookie cutter houses on the straight and narrow yellow brick road?  My Land of Oz is yet over another hill and Toto has met his destiny in the never-ending poppy fields.

Again, I’m in the wrong place at the right time.  I have to fix that.  First I have to determine if I speak figuratively or not.  The former would be an easy change.  The other option would be an endeavor to be attempted by a younger me…I think.  I don’t think the middle age me is equipped for a “leap of faith”.  And please don’t take that phrase literally.

I feel like I am a character in a Dr. Seuss story.  Maybe the one with “Green Eggs and Ham” for I know what I do not like, but can’t figure out what I do.

Here’s the shortlist:  I don’t like:

·        The inevitability that my rut will define me

·        The eventuality that options for enlightenment will diminish

·        The complacency which rules today may become my reality

Ooh, that’s TRULY scary.

I started to break out and snap out of it recently.  Took a class for seniors; liked it, aced it and were it not for a personality challenge with the current professor would have stayed with it. 

Trying to reenter the "have a job and get paid for it" group, but my sixty years skill set is out of date.  Forget the draw of age-appropriate social circles…just confirmation of my eventual demise.

Yes, it’s time for a change and more schooling and more tests. More studies and thankfully I have the time for unending all-nighters.

I am totally unprepared, not the stomach ulcer, nail biting days of my youth but unprepared just the same.

So go ahead and delegate the next sequence of exams; make sure they include an essay and short answer section.  Don’t grade on a curve and no do-overs.

I am becoming who I am; fate has intervened….and if it weren’t for extra credit (of which I have gleaned an extraordinary amount), I’d be nervous.