This is a truism that I feel pretty sure we are all fairly familiar with but which still bears repeating from time to time…making that decision, whatever it is, whether big or small, will almost always reinstate more flow, give rise to feelings of release you can’t even imagine until they start pouring in and, at last, provide some momentum with whatever has been feeling most stuck in your life. Where momentum is, a certain kind of magic tends to happen because it loosens things up in the matrix of existence to allow opportunities to arise, connections to be made, synchronicities to appear.

It’s certainly something that has proved itself more than once in my life!

When we sit on that fence, sometimes for years or even decades, putting off that one decision that niggles and nags at us in our peripheral vision but which we think is impossible to make, we tend to jam up the energy in our lives so much that all our other circumstances, our physical bodies, our thoughts become tangled and convoluted, painful and stagnant. Everything else is now trying to format itself around this one giant elephant in the room which shouldn’t even be there, only we won’t take the necessary steps to do something about it. Even when the decision is fairly minor, the fact of thinking we are unable to make it can throw us out of our confidence and flow, deprive us of access to our best intuition and turn us into someone that generally feels stuck in a holding pattern, waiting for something from the outside to nudge us into a better place. Of course, this may never happen or the mere fact of waiting for it turns us into someone who primarily makes decisions in reaction to things we don’t want rather than out of choice.

I had the simple pleasure of how it feels to move past an “impossible” decision (feeling dammed if you do, dammed if you don’t) demonstrated to me again today as I made an important one, to us at any rate, just yesterday and had the nerve to finally carry it out. This morning, although I felt utterly exhausted before I went to bed (as though I was about to have a full-on burnout), I now feel as though my entire system has had a reboot and a massive weight has lifted off my shoulders, not to mention I can see a whole lot more light a the end of the tunnel.

Anyone who has been reading my recent posts will know that I have been faced with a dilemma as to whether to move from this place we are renting to, well, another place, or places, we can rent whilst waiting out the time period before the house we are buying becomes available. When we first set out on this adventure to move location, I knew that we might have to hop around from place to place for a time but the reality is, its not so easy, nor cost-effective, to do so, especially at this time of year when places available for longer periods are few and far between. So once you have landed in a “safe” place and taken all the necessary steps to change all your addresses, set up delivery and food buying routines and so on, it seems far easier, even more practical in lots of ways, to be grateful and stay put…after all, its not going to be forever. However, the prospect of that had been making both of us miserable, even unwell (not helped by chronic damp in the house setting off all my allergies again), for quite a few weeks now, whatever logic seemed to dictate about staying put, and we couldn’t just keep on ignoring how we felt. Talk about frying pan into the fire, we were now far unhappier here than we were in the house we were so joyful to sell before we moved!

So I’ve bashed against it, I’ve whined, I’ve worried, I’ve combed through all of the options for weeks and weeks, none of which made me feel comfortable or safe compared to at least having this one roof over our heads but then which was worse…taking the plunge or continuing to live somewhere that was making us feel so depressed?

Finally, last week, when I got back to find mice running around in the house and more damp coming through the walls, not to mention wintery draughts through the ill-fitting windows and doors, I decided enough is enough and set to work trying to figure out what I could do about it. One week later to the day, I have now cobbled together a plan that has enabled us to give notice and have other places we can go and live very soon until such time as our own house is ready. Its nail-biting, its going to be expensive (compared to what we’ve been doing…which was a giant life-lesson in not to cut cost corners with accommodation when there’s a choice, if ever I had one!) and its going to mean more upheaval at the end of the year, which is the time that my ever challenging health and entire neurodivergent nervous system most neeeeeds to be safely nestled in routine and warmth and lower stimulation. However, cast in the right light, it could also be a time of fun and adventure, a chance to experience a different kind of Christmas to our normal, closer to people we want to spend the festive season with, and to tick a few things off my bucket list before we settle down again. I allowed myself to think outside the box, look at our priorities and parameters and then talk to people I trusted and had dealt with before to see what I could arrange and the net result is that we have a plan!

Meanwhile, the news that we can move forwards on our own house could arise at literally any moment as we are just waiting for one sticking point in the chain to resolve itself, which it will, hopefully early in the new year, but its taking some time and requires patience and trust that it will happen in good time. This entire year has been the biggest ever exercise in faith and also patience, the latter being something I don’t have a whole lot of, and yet there’s also an important balance to be found between being “good and patient” (our culture has created such a strong link between those two words…) yet also being responsive and proactive when something isn’t sustainable or supporting your health and wellbeing.

I think that a lot of us, especially females, were ingrained with the idea that absolute patience and meekness in the face of circumstances we shouldn’t have to be putting up with is a virtue when we were growing up and so we forget how to stand up for ourselves and do something about it when, with a few well timed decisions, we can often make things a whole lot better. Resisting making that decision can make a victim out of us, as I learned the hard way until I finally had the courage to end my first marriage, even though circumstances were far from “perfect” at the time and it involved a huge amount of uncertainty and risk…yet there was never a better decision made in my life and so much that is wonderful would never have happened if I hadn’t taken it!

This has happened to me many times before, and the instantaneous way that making that decision restores flow never ceases to amaze me. After feeling crashed-out yesterday with all the high-tension that this last week has brought to me (and many hours spent figuring out logistics that felt precarious, setting off all my fight or flight alarms as, for instance, we went to view properties that were just as unsuitable as the one we are currently in…) I seem to have bounced back this morning with more vim and vigour inside of me than I’ve had for quite a while.

I can tell this because I am feeling creative for the first time in weeks. Suddenly, I have had new projects occur to me as soon as I woke up and I was already scrolling ideas for the next creative thing I might want to get my teeth into over Christmas before I even got out of bed. Until now, I’ve had an almighty log-jam in those creative juices as I just couldn’t seem to get going with any of my interests in this house; a sure sign it wasn’t sustainable as creativity is like breath to me!

Also, I feel much better because now I have a concrete plan of action so I’m back where I was before this long stagnation, back in my old house where I spent months busying myself with the project of decluttering, packing-up, marketing and leaving my old house…and in many ways, I’m never happier than when I’ve got a clear deadline and a complicated strategy to come up with. I think its just part of the way my neurodvergent brain works but it thrives on complication just so long as there is a way out that I am at liberty to figure out…but when its complicated and yet I feel trapped by odds that are stacked against me, its the worst thing in the world and sends my neuro-chemistry into a sort of brain-death because what is even the point? Getting that point back is the objective of making these hard decisions because, sometimes, it only takes choosing one fork in the road over another for the point of all your efforts to come back into view again. Now, I have plenty to chew on and I can already see what traction I’ve made in this last week, not to mention how much I need to get sorted in the coming month; all of which, to me, is one giant dopamine explosion because it has its point back and the point is things are going to get better for us!

The same thing as all this happened exactly a year ago when we broke the stalemate of many years by deciding we would try to sell our house and relocate to somewhere we really wanted to be, however daunting that seemed to be and whether or not it was the so-called perfect time to do it (years of worrying about that oh-so elusive “right time” had kept us stuck somewhere we really didn’t want to be for so long it had made us lose nearly all our verve). Once we made that decision, all those other worries melted away and suddenly we were a powerhouse of industry getting all those “impossible” jobs done to fix the house and make it look the very best it had ever been. Against the odds, some ideal opportunities present themselves to us at just the right times that would never have arrisen if we hadn’t had the nerve to make the decision in the first place.

Its been a tough year, one that has really put my autistic sensibilities through an assault course as I don’t like uncertainty, don’t like constant change, don’t like feeling overstimulated by things I can’t control…etc….but, its all been worth it because I look at all the progress we’ve made and I allow myself to take in that we’re nearly there, plus we’ve made some unforgettable memories along the way through all our efforts to see new places and do new things whenever we can. I’ve also given my synapses one hell of a work out, before they had a chance to stagnate into some sort of predictable old age, and I’ve proven to myself that I have more stamina than I thought, reminding myself that I’m not half bad at project managing a thing either!

My conclusion is that it’s the worse thing, by far, to allow yourself to remain stuck out of fear of consequences that may never happen. Its very easy to do (hence why so many people do it), and I’ve done it as many times as the rest, but when I sometimes don’t do it…like this…I always thank my lucky stars, breathe in one giant breath of relief as the flow comes pouring back in all of its own accord and think to myself “thank goodness” that I’m still able to rally the necessary fortitude to take life on and not just sit there taking it all on the chin!