Intention

My word of the year

An important part of transitioning this life is the art of intention. It is like a muscle that has to be worked out. It’s not easy. I have never been an intentional person. I have always been a go with the flow kinda girl. If I am tired, I sleep. If I am hungry, I eat. If I am bored, I scroll until I am out of time to be bored.

I have wasted so much time.

I am haunted by the things I could have accomplished if I had started living with intention years ago. But you literally can’t be intentional until you have some idea of what you want. Being intentional is making choices that get you to a specific goal, choosing that goal daily, in every moment of your day. It’s deciding who you are, then acting accordingly. You can’t do that if you aren’t sure of what you want.

I know I haven’t lived with intention because I never really thought I could be much of anything. I was just happy if I got through the day. I never thought I was good enough to really go anywhere. My days were filled with me looking around lost, not sure what the next step was because I was so stuck.

I know what I came from. I came from chaos and crazy. A life caught up in the daily survival of addiction and hiding from anything real. I watched my parents stumble into whatever was in front of them. I saw my brothers live as if there was no future. I turned into a person lost in the haze of marijuana and alcohol. When your mind is numb, you don’t have to think about what your goals are. You just get to the next high.

There were moments of clarity when I thought I knew what I wanted, who I wanted to be. But when it came time to make a decision, I floundered. I hid. I waited. I panicked. I scrolled.

I had a destination, but I wasn’t getting on the train. I was just standing by the tracks, watching the cars passing me by, wondering it just missed my stop. But the truth is, I was never even on the platform. I didn’t even know what train I was trying to get on.

Turns out, it was never a train. It was a plane. And I had my ticket all along. I just had to decide to go to the airport.

This is transition. This is going from survival to execution of goals. I am focused on intention because I finally feel like I can go somewhere. I wish I wouldn’t have wasted so much time, especially when my kids were little. We could have had so much more. But this is what a life in transition is. It’s mourning the could-have-been without beating yourself up. It’s knowing that it’s late, but not too late. Maybe it’s even right on time.