Endings make me sad
Endings make me sad. Not the endings of bad and excruciating things which, thank God, I have few of, but the ending of good experiences and goals completed. I often start feeling sad long before the last stretch. It doesn’t spoil the experience but it does add a layer of complication for me; a depth of feeling.
I remember the beginning of the last semester of my Bachelor’s degree. I already knew I would graduate and that my grades would be great. I really liked going to school and even though I also worked full-time during that period, I started missing it right then as if I had already done it and moved on. I didn’t even go to the graduation. By the time that happened my head was elsewhere and onto the next thing. A few months later I became a teacher which require me to have that very degree.
I remember this type of thing happening to me a lot in life like realizing it was time to leave a job even though everything was going well or realizing a relationship had a soon-coming expiration date even though I was enjoying their company. In the smallest way, it can even happen in the middle of a great movie or a great conversation. It’s like having a vivid vision of your future and noticing that the thing you love right now is not in it. It makes me feel sad.
I haven’t always dealt with it well but my life is about change and growth, now more than ever with greater intention and intensity so it will likely happen again. How I’ve dealt with it is by staggering my goals. I don’t start my New Year’s resolutions on the new year anymore. I start them when the last one is done or even just before the last one is done. There is always something new and exciting on my agenda that wants to happen but needs the current thing to get out of the way, to be completed. Often there is more than one. It’s the downtime in-between or not knowing what I traded the good time for that makes me sad now so I have been working to minimize it, allocating it to the next exciting thing on my ever-evolving list of great things to accomplish.
