I can't wait....

Impatience. It's something I've always suffered from.

I suppose I should explain a little bit about the site. I have a BIG deadline for a long-term piece of research (my PhD) which is due for submission on the 31st March. In theory, every waking moment should be spent trying to meet this deadline and not planning my life, which starts again from the 1st April. I started it in 2004 and it has been trailing around behind me now for four and a bit long years.

But that is not the reason for Springtime. There is an ideal which we are trying to achieve. We have our house on the market to sell and we are renting a lovely place in the Lake District, the Barn. The house has been on the market for about 8 months now, I know, it's the worst time to try to do something like this. I'm getting a little impatient for the ideal, as it includes us having our own cottage in the lakes with one or two spare bedrooms so we can offer bed and breakfast and a little bit of land for a proper vegetable patch and some chickens. Springtime is my record of ideas, preparation and thoughts about/for our ideal; and hopefully at some point this year, the realisation of our dream.

The Barn is great but it doesn't really have a garden, just a flower bed in the shade of the house and a shared courtyard. The other day while I was dreaming about growing our own vegetables again I decided that actually it's a bit silly to put life on hold until 1st April. So, I started to research what grows well in pots! Now I'm just waiting for my seeds and seed potatoes to arrive. Again, the impatience is kicking in...

I just saw a man with a PDA wandering around outside and my hopes were raised that it was a delivery man with my seeds who was having problems finding the Barn. Anxious to get outside before he left, I quickly pulled my shoes on and grabbed my car keys to make it look like I desperately needed something from my car, but actually I was just going to see if he needed directions (ideally to the Barn to deliver my seeds). And then I saw his van: E-On. Oh well, my patience needs to be stretched a little further.

...back to the PhD.

The clash of the new and the old

“There are times to cultivate and create, when you nurture your world and give birth to new ideas and ventures. There are times of flourishing and abundance, when life feels in full bloom, energized and expanding. And there are times of fruition, when things come to an end. They have reached their climax and must be harvested before they begin to fade. And finally of course, there are times that are cold, and cutting and empty, times when the spring of new beginnings seems like a distant dream. Those rhythms in life are natural events. They weave into one another as day follows night, bringing, not messages of hope and fear, but messages of how things are.” Chogyam Trungpa

How very true.

That's exactly how I feel at the moment.

As one stale, old and tired piece of my life draws to a close I can't wait for the new flourish of the next phase. At the moment they seem to overlap somewhat, making my emotions roller-coaster around between dramatic highs and lows.