So What Next?

I am sitting here today, on the 28th day of June 2021, at the age of 59, in our new fancy apartment in Brighton.

(It’s far too fancy to be called a flat btw, it’s pretty much the perfect penthouse I always imagined living in when I was older, except it’s not on the top floor, but on the penultimate floor in this block.)

Not older, yet, either.  Well, certainly not as old as I’d envisaged I’d have to be, to live in an apartment like this.  Brand new, still sparkling clean, full of brand new furniture, right next to the North Laines, with a lift.  I can hear the Speigle Tent of the Brighton Fringe for heaven’s sake, you can’t get much more central.

I can even have a little dog if I want to and in my daydream, there was always a little dog. I am not going to get a little dog yet, far too much responsibility, but I could if I want to.  It says so in the lease.

“As long as you’re still alive, you always have the chance to start again.”
― Emily Acker, No Longer Broken

There’s an amazing and unexpected bonus which is that my daughter Phoebe is here too.  Now that’s something I never imagined, thinking that when I was old enough for this apartment, she’d be off having her own family.  She’s not quite there at that stage of her life yet, it all having happened much suddenly and earlier than anticipated, so here she is.  Living with her old ma, issuing strict instructions about how I am not to behave like a Ma, ever, at all.

If you look back, you’ll see my last blog post was written around the 12th of March 2020, when we thought a pandemic was on the way.  I was washing up and trying to be mindful, keeping panic under control.  Being an avid dystopian sci-fi reader that was easier said than done.  I wonder if I had ordered the three months’ worth of pasta and couscous, tinned tuna and tomatoes, stock cubes, red lentils, and Encona Hot Pepper sauce from Tesco by then.  I must have done.

Once I finished washing up, I wrote the blog post remembering Steve, who died five (and a bit!) years ago now.  He’d have loved this apartment, being very fond of brand new places with brand new furniture.  He probably wouldn’t have lived here with me, not being that keen on Brighton, although he may have changed his mind on that by now.  No, my life has taken some strange twists and turns since he died and it probably wouldn’t have unraveled that way if he was still around.

Now all the flatpack has been assembled by Phoebe’s obliging boyfriend, all our existing boxes are unpacked, recycling taken to the Bin Room in Block A, I’m starting to run out of things to do.

I’m wondering ‘So what next?’.  What’s next for me, in life?  That’s the burning question I now wake up to every day, go to sleep to, and have ringing in my head for most of the day.

As getting your thoughts out of your head is a great way to move forward, here I am blogging again. I’m going to model myself on one of my first business mentors Chris Barrow, Dental Business Coach, he blogs daily and keeps it short.  I want to blog daily and keep it short.  However, I’m not known for my brevity, once I get going.

Keep it daily, short, simple, with one picture.  I’ll share that on social media and to my mailing list.  See what happens, if anything.

It will give me a structure to the day.  Make me feel that I’m achieving something every day.

Just keep going.

“When your world is completely flattened, you have no choice but to start over from the ground up. It can take over a decade. Anyone that watched from afar would call this a tragic catastrophe. I now know one of life’s greatest secrets; destruction breeds growth.” ― Kristin Michelle Elizabeth