Starting over...

Over the past few months I have been lucky enough to be offered a couple of new opportunities at my job which allow me to grow and expand my knowledge base in the wonderful world of configuration management. The downside is that each new “opportunity” also requires relocating to a new office.

Moving from office to office is a lot like moving from house to house, albeit on a much smaller scale. Each time you move you have to sort through all of the items in your office, decide which items are worthy of packing and which ones can be tossed. There are also those items that make you stop and wonder “how the heck did that get there?!” and “how did I get so much stuff, in such a small space, in such a small amount of time?!”.

It was during my most recent move that one of my new co-workers stopped by to see how the unpacking was coming along. As we chatted, he made the comment “well, there’s nothing like starting over”. After he left I thought of how very true those words are and just how often we “start over” in life.

For me, starting over first came when I got married in nineteen-eighty-three and moved out of my parent’s house into a home with my new husband. Although, technically speaking, I guess that would actually be referred to as starting out since we were young newlyweds, living on our own for the very first time in our lives. It wasn’t long though before the starting over truly began.

Over the years, each time we moved to a new house, a new town or even another state, we had to start over. There was the birth of our children, new jobs, new friends and too many situations to list that each required its own form of starting over. Even death is, in a way, starting over since you have to learn how to live with someone who had previously played a big part in your life.

In two thousand eight, I made probably the biggest starting over decision of my life. I decided to leave my marriage of almost twenty-five years and start over. This was a very scary move and one that caused a lot of alienation between me and the people I loved the most. Without getting into all the “why’s” here, let’s just say that this was an extremely difficult decision and one that I knew would have many repercussions.

Fast forward to a few short months later and I once again found myself starting over when I made the decision to start dating and then again when we decided to move in together. The following three years were filled with a series of starting overs as our lives changed and grew. The purchase of a home together, career changes and his fourteen year old son coming to live with us seem to all be part of some giant starting over domino effect. Each starting over brought its own unique set of challenges and rewards. Getting married again was a HUGE starting over event for both of us. 

As I think back on the many times in my life I have had to start over, it occurs to me that, in its own way, each day is a way of starting over. You get to leave yesterday behind and begin a new day fresh and clean, kind of like one of those old fashioned chalkboards so many of us grew up knowing. Each day, the teacher would erase all the chalk from the board and occasionally would even take a wet cloth and wash the board. The days of our lives are like that. Some days we are able to start fresh with a clean slate, all the chalk of yesterday washed away. We have the opportunity to do whatever we like with our fresh new chalkboard. The lessons we can learn are endless. Other days there are remnants of the previous days lessons that didn't quite get erased completely. These are the things that we carry with us from day to day that keep us from moving forward. Like small children, we are so intent on trying to see the vague lines of chalk still left, trying to put the pieces of words back together again, that we fail to realize that lesson is gone. It's in the past and it's now time to face a new day and a new lesson.

Each and every day should be viewed as a gift...as a clean chalkboard with which we can start over. Don't worry about the faint lines, still barely visible from yesterday's lesson, but focus instead on the new lessons you will learn today. Think of each day as a chance to write whatever you like on your chalkboard. Whether it's something as major as a big project at work or something as simple as a grocery list. What you do with your chalkboard is up to you. When you awake tomorrow, how will you start over?