5 Year-iversary

Today marks the five year anniversary of this blog.

Five years ago, on October 2, 2004, I wrote in reference to what "Now What?" meant:

"Well, it can be a very complicated question to answer. Now what? I'm never sure of how to answer it, so I do what anyone else bouncing from one uncertainty to the next would do...I avoid answering the question. Indeed, I avoid thinking about it as much as possible. Does this make me sound bad in any way? Well, stick around I guess. We'll see how I get through life."

And I clearly wasn't wrong...it is a very complicated question to answer. Over the last few years, I've taken a few stabs at trying to answer it directly, but for the most part, I've let the story tell itself in answer to that question.

Well, some things stay the same. And others change. I still bounce from one uncertainty to the next...this is my very nature, my modus operandi. I let my life happen to me, which is evidenced by my ability to leap before looking (hence the bouncing from one uncertainty to the next); but in the past several years, I've become a stronger woman with fewer insecurities, and lesser worries. So this bodes well for leaping first. And yet, I've taken some serious control of my life. I don't mind giving up control of the day-to-day to Fate, which affords me the many chances to go off half-cocked (or not cocked at all, in some instances); this is fun! But where and when it counts, I'm in control, and I'm formidable.

But talk about change! A significant change that I could never have envisioned my present life five years ago, for instance. It wouldn't have occurred to me to believe I could be in Grad School in Vancouver, and married to Rod. I was hitting my stride as a student yes, but I wasn't 'Grad Studies Material'; and Rod was so passionately against marrying me that I seriously questioned what we were even doing together. So it's taken a series of intricately linked 'Now whats' to reach the present, which you could see by looking back over the years in the blog.

But there is something that will never, ever change, and that is my need to explore. It is my raison d'être. Every 'Now what' that pops up requires finding an answer, shallow or profound, or at the very least, a direction to move in. And it will never stop. 'Now what?' is a question that won't end until I do, and even then, I suspect I'm just "Fancy" enough to have left behind some business that forces the question into the minds of those left living with my legacy.

So...you know what's coming...

Now what?