Planning!

I’m feeling a bit impatient. There is so much in the pipeline just waiting to come to fruition but I’m having to wait for things to naturally evolve. I’m very much a sit and think things through carefully kind of person but then when I make my mind up on something it’s full steam ahead. In so many ways my ability to focus and think things through carefully has eroded as my Parkinson’s Disease has progressed.

I struggle to stay focussed on any one thing for any period of time.

My once methodical ability to start and complete a task has almost disappeared.  I find it hard to believe that only a few years ago I was completing a BA (Hons), working through a teacher training course, was heavily pregnant too and although I was blissfully unaware had started to tremor and experience rigidity in my fingers of one hand which I now know was Parkinson’s Disease manifesting. I remember at my graduation ceremony standing proudly with my tiny baby in my arms as I wore my cap and gown thinking my family was complete, my current studies were complete and I was planning how I was going to juggle work, bringing up my young family and factoring in an MA at some point too! I really thought my life was of my design and I had lots of exciting things still to achieve.

Well fast forward to now and I realise that all it takes is one major life event to change all of that.

So now I repeatedly forget passwords, struggle to stay focussed with books even though I have been a book worm for as long as I can remember. From the moment I wake to when I go to sleep my mind tends to flit from one thing to another. It doesn’t impact my life in a major way at this time. I’m still able to outwardly do everything that needs to be done. I am aware that there has been a massive shift in my own head even though I can cover it well so it’s an awareness I’m quietly monitoring at this point in my life. I know my limits now and actually that’s ok. It means that in any one day I can half plan many things and some may be completed, others may be remembered and completed in the near future and others may be forgotten about completely.

It’s another aspect of the condition which has to be recognised and accepted.

OK I may never complete the things I had once hoped to BUT life is taking me on this new journey and I’m trying to embrace it.

Back to my current plans: I have decisions to make about kitchens, windows and landscaping and I’m surrounded by catalogues and online shops pulling my mind this way and that desperately trying to narrow down all of the amazingly pretty things out there and avoid being impulsive just because I can’t order my thoughts as easily as I once could. In some ways it’s annoying but in others there’s something quite liberating in having a mind that is a bit unpredictable and more at ease to take a little risk now and again.

Thank you for reading.