{"id":602,"date":"2019-09-19T20:09:04","date_gmt":"2019-09-19T20:09:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lapsedordinary.net\/?p=602"},"modified":"2021-01-03T12:43:08","modified_gmt":"2021-01-03T12:43:08","slug":"exciting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lapsed.ordinary\/2019\/09\/19\/exciting\/","title":{"rendered":"Exciting"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

14 months ago my wife died<\/a>. My life at the moment is quite exciting.<\/p>\n\n\n

Now I obviously don’t mean the latter sentence to be a corollary of the former. But they are more linked than it may seem.<\/p>\n\n\n

Losing someone very close to you, such as a partner, isn’t easy. I have struggled in the time since Dimitra died, have worried about the future and felt pretty unsettled, often more than I admitted to myself.<\/p>\n\n\n

But, at least in part because I never had to worry about practical things, it never felt like something I wouldn’t be able to overcome. It always felt liked something that, because it wouldn’t kill me, would make me stronger. It did.<\/p>\n\n\n

This life experience has made me a better person. A stronger one, who can deal with things affecting me and others. The kind of person person who I always wanted to be but someone never really managed to become.<\/p>\n\n\n

And that is exciting.<\/p>\n\n\n

Suddenly finding myself single again and after slowly untangling myself from my relationship with Dimitra, I am now forced to look at questions like: who am I? What do I like? What do I really want to do in life? What do I need<\/em> to do in life. I had not really looked at any of those questions that seriously since my mid-20s.<\/p>\n\n\n

In the past year, I have discovered more new music than I had in the ten years before. I haven’t read more books, because I already read a lot, but my reading has become more purposeful and focused rather than pure entertainment. I have made many new friends. And I have been thinking about next jobs.<\/p>\n\n\n

That is really exciting too.<\/p>\n\n\n

It is still unclear what my future looks like, other than that I have now set things in motion for things to become quite different and also, at least in the journey there, quite difficult. But, as I keep telling myself, things being difficult is a feature not a bug. I need for this to be difficult rather than find some kind of shortcut to a next phase in life.<\/p>\n\n\n

Really, that too is exciting.<\/p>\n\n\n

I feel very privileged to have been given the opportunity at this phase in my life to get to know myself better, become a better person and to look for where I can make a real difference.<\/p>\n\n\n

In some poetic sense, Dimitra showed her love for me by stepping aside and giving me this opportunity. I can only reciprocate that love by doing my utmost best to live a good life.<\/p>\n\n\n

And that is the most exciting thing of all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

14 months ago my wife died. My life at the moment is quite exciting. Now I obviously don’t mean the latter sentence to be a corollary of the former. But they are more linked than it may seem. Losing someone very close to you, such as a partner, isn’t easy. I have struggled in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lapsed.ordinary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/602"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lapsed.ordinary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lapsed.ordinary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lapsed.ordinary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lapsed.ordinary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=602"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/lapsed.ordinary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/602\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":768,"href":"http:\/\/lapsed.ordinary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/602\/revisions\/768"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lapsed.ordinary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lapsed.ordinary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lapsed.ordinary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}