Learning to Float

While transitions are a part of life, I like to fight them. I'm that swimmer in the ocean - the one swept out to sea and struggling with the waves instead of letting them carry me back to shore. Because ultimately, isn't that what transitions do? Carry us to our next phase of life? To our next chapter, so to speak?

My transition back from Spain this summer was a bumpy one. I was getting used to soulful conversations around gourmet food at the magical artist residency in El Bruc. While I didn't necessarily come home kicking and screaming, I came home looking backwards instead of forward. Once I got my bearings, I was thrust into another transition: five hours before teaching my first class of the semester, I got a call that enrollment was down at the college and my class was canceled. Ouch. Really? Five hours notice? I freaked out appropriately and then set to work finishing my third novel, the one I was too busy to tend to in Spain. I finished it. With all this new spare time I also decided to publish my ebook Imperfect as a traditional book. It is now available for purchase. 

Another birthday, the loss of a friendship, the birth of twelve new ones, applying for wonderful and adventurous teaching opportunities, finishing a novel, starting a new one... all transitions. 

With our without our consent, change is coming. I suppose it's time to stop fighting it and to start trusting the ride, the chapters, the story. 

Melissa Clark is the author of Swimming Upstream, Slowly, Imperfect, and the recently completed Bear Witness. In the above photo she is learning how to float in the ocean.