Allison Howard – Walking heart

You know what, I have to say one part to my personality is that I am really obedient, now this might sound strange to some people that know me, as I give off the impression of being quite the opposite. But in actual fact I would have to be one of the more obedient people in the world, dare I say universe. Why? Because I love structure. I love routine and I love the security I feel in knowing exactly what is going to happen, what needs to be done and what I have to do. 

Give me a task, with a time line and I will make the schedule, I will have all the tasks broken down incrementally to the closest time note on when everything needs to be or should be done. I love it I am actually right now getting excited about the thought of this. You see, when that list is created I revel in its completion and get so excited at my preparedness, I can see the future and all its possibilities, and with this in my mind, I am ready, the task is practically done, and I don’t have to worry about it anymore. 

Now this aspect to my personality can be seen as efficient but also taken negatively such as, “excitable”, “over thinking”, “overly-keen”, “controlling” or the worst one  “helicopter.” Yes unfortunately my love for schedules and the need to know what exactly is going to happen and how the day, week, month, year, will turn out, spills over into my beloved families reality. 

God bless my little family, especially my lovely husband who bares witness to all this energy. Sometimes I feel he just stands there in the middle of my tornado of preparedness watching as I spin out of control and true to his beautiful calm and quiet scientific mind he just stands there, mostly perplexed, wondering how this particular episode will end. Not all the time mind you, he can get frustrated with me and all my scheduling  and I know I have gone too far when he puts the reins on my planning twister, but mostly he just watches and goes along for the ride, picking up the piece’s in my wake, most of the time shaking his head with a slight grin, (well I like to imagine he is smiling anyway). 

I guess this is where the appearance of obedience and disobedience can get confusing. You see depending on the task and the tone of the request that is made is how I respond. You see if the task is offered with the “Oh you cant do that, it will be too hard” I will most likely respond with “Well Fuck you, I am going to do it anyway” and then proceed to do this task 100% better than anyone else. I mean how else did I end up winning Best Masters thesis for my year? Infact how else did I end up doing my bachelors or even completing my senior year at secondary school. Because the teachers and supervisors believed I could not do it, nearly everyone told me what I was doing was wrong. You see, you cant beat a schedule, you always win when you have a plan. This is how I have operated for most of my life, up until now.

You see usually what happens is that someone directly gives me a job to do or a task to complete and this gives me an anchor, a direction I need to move, regardless whether that person believes I can do it or not becomes ill relevant. I see the goal posts and the reason to get from A to B and I am off. Now the problem I am facing at the moment is that right now not only do I have my A and B point of direction, but what is looming over these points is the rest of the alphabet stretching out in-front of me as far as the eye can see. What seems to be happening is that the end points are moving, there is no sure point B and this unnerves me. Right now I have found myself outside of my planning abilities. I have fallen off the safety of the schedule and now floating in the unpredictable territory of the Isle of No Plan Land. 

To be honest I am finding this quite hard to come to terms with. I am not sure how to explain what is happening but there are several big life events starting to develop and as the cogs start to move on these possibilities I feel I have no hold on how to control or move within the parameters of the millions of different goals posts that I can see ahead of me, and I am starting to feel overwhelmed.

Why would this be? I hear you ask. Well I have finally found myself not being able to trust all the elements within the task head of time. I am unable to predict the actions of other people and institutions. I have accidentally found myself in the trust game of falling backwards expecting someone to catch me, and I am in mid fall; I hate this.

How did I end up here? You ask. Well because I have just realised no matter how much you schedule not everything will go as planned. I have been living in a deluded state my whole life. Take my child’s school, it was supposed to be the best school in the area, I did my research and the tours, I went to every school in the area, I asked around in my community and the goal posts stood tall and strong for the school I chose, but if you have been reading my last several post it has certainly turned out to be the exact opposite, my point B was wrong. The goal posts for that task not only changed position but colour and texture as well, and for the first time ever in my life, this has got me looking into the future and not trusting the plan, I don’t know what I am doing, I am unable to see the future, I don’t know what I am doing is right or wrong, and I am scared of making a mistake. 

These thoughts are what inspired my latest illustration titled “The Goal Posts” water colour and felt pen on paper. I actually had fun with this one I was trying out a new paper as I splurged and forked out for some nice heavy water colour paper and it felt great, not a load of colour bleeding or smudging. The only criticism is that I should have got A1 size as A3 just isn’t big enough, I love to draw big. Anyway back to my problem.

So what do about all these goal posts? Well its not not that as easy to change a mind set. But as I type these words I know what I need to do. I need to stop being so obedient to the “future”, I need to be fluid in my thoughts I need to stop planning and coming up with alternate end points. I need to stop looking at the structure of the goal posts as finite and instead focus on the fluid space that is in between them. I need to be comfortable with no plan and simply move when the goal post change and try to stay calm in that movement. You see goal posts are solid in the ground but I am free to move where ever I like, maybe if I practice this mind set, throw away my schedule, and move outside of obedience.    

I will leave you with this quote from the amazing philosopher, Martin Luther King Jr. — ‘You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.’

This advice is simple yet profound. It means, you don’t have to figure everything out or be guaranteed success before you begin. You just need the faith to take that critical first step, and this is what I need to do. 

Hope you are all well and seeking the sun even when it is grey. Stay safe everyone xoxoxo