Lately my mind has been occupied on many fronts. In fact given the many balls I seem to have on the go, I should really learn to juggle.
Recently I’ve found myself looking at the wall planner on my office wall, sensing my eyes scanning over the weeks and months. Whilst the coloured dots and stickers that cover specific dates create a kaleidoscope of business objectives, my mind wanders to personal dates that seem to be permanently etched into my mind. Three weeks to a now cancelled break, eight weeks to an important point in the year.
As I usually do, when I have a lot on my mind I do two things – work harder and over analyse my thoughts continually. Someone recently pointed out to me that I seem to have a shield that I deploy that keeps people away and only lets them in on my terms, the shield has been up quite a bit lately. There are some times when my introverted thought process gives me some clarity and focus, and certainly today I felt like I had an epiphany of sorts as the deep analysis reached its conclusion.
In other news, I await each day a letter from the local court services giving me the date of my Decree Nisi. I’ve seldom spoken much, if any, about the breakdown of my marriage on this or my previous blog. I do not regret for one moment ever getting married. I was a much different person at 24 than I am now and the formative years of my marriage played a large part in making me who I am today. The end game we find ourselves playing at the moment is both amicable and fair. On one hand I am sorry it took us both this long to get here, but on the other we both needed to get here in our own way. We make much better friends than we did husband and wife that much is true, yet I couldn’t help the strange feeling of disappointment when I posted the paperwork to the court. Not through regret or thoughts of changing my mind, but through sorrow that a promise made so many years ago fell so short and didn’t last the distance.
We have struggled greatly to prep one of our race cars to a competitive standard. In fact after two very frustrating days testing, I pulled the car from racing for the race it was planned to run in. Whereas this came as a shock to the guys who have been preparing it, I felt that with the limited time we had left we just weren’t going to get it anywhere near right. Whilst some may say this was a defeatist attitude, when you have drivers paying you their hard earned money to race, sometimes you have to make a judgement call as to whether you can deliver value for money. The drive home from the circuit that night was a very long and lonely one indeed. So the car sits in the workshop gathering dust and is looking likely that it will get sold along with two others whilst I push the team in a difference direction for 2010 and beyond. Speaking with one of the drivers as we wound that last test session down, we spoke about the good results we’d had the year before and how we achieved those. It may well be time to go back to basics and race Porsches again.
So, life continues at a pace. Such a pace that it sadly seems there is no time for a holiday this year. So I shall while away my days looking at the wall planner and watching dates draw nearer, marking them off one by one, day by day.
Sorry that you won’t get a holiday this year, but at least the year is almost two-thirds over right? Maybe next year you can make it back to the US…
I hope so, I was supposed to be in Atlanta at the end of September and then California a couple of weeks later.
Maybe you need to let those walls down a little bit…someone to shoulder a little of the burden and the work with you?
Its always the way that when you need a holiday the most, you don’t have the time. Which is often why you need one in the first place. Shut up, Jo. I have a friend who’s just gone through a divorce. She doesn’t have regrets either, sometimes the bad stuff is the best stuff to learn stuff. n Stuff.
GO ON HOLIDAY! ;o)
My Dad told me that the day he posted his divorce papers was one of the saddest of his life – and he and my mother hate each other! I thought he’d be relieved to be rid of the woman, to be honest. But he said much the same as you have said here. It is just good that you and your wife have a decent relationship now.
And try and squeeze in a holiday, even if you just go to Cornwall or Brighton for a long weekend. Everyone needs a rest.
Come to Portugal with me next Thursday!
It does sound like you need some downtime, even a weekend away somewhere…
Well, for once I am listening to advice from other people! I’m about to go and drop the dog off at the kennels and have a long weekend chilling out somewhere other than my house or my office.
Have a good bank holiday weekend all.
Did you mention that the decree nisi had come through? Hope so. Would be great to draw a line under it.
Ahem…not much going on here!