...is contemplating serendipity.

1:59 AM

I clearly should have written before now. It's late and I'm getting a little cloudy, so I think I'll head to dreamland and give this a shot in the morning. Or at whatever time it is that I wake up.


4:25 PM

So it turns out that even my delay in writing about serendipity was serendipitous.

I arrived here after hours Saturday night, and the resort office is closed on Sunday, so I needed to check in with them today. Of course, they are unfamiliar with my sleeping schedule, so they mistakenly expected to see me this morning. Ha. Here's what I just found out though... there was a lot of confusion about my reservation, because it came in with someone else's name. To be precise, it came in with the owner of this unit's name. That gentleman apparently owns multiple weeks at this resort and he has never traded in one of his weeks before. Ever. He did this time though. Last minute. Meanwhile, there was a chick in north Florida dreaming of escaping to south Florida for a week. Last minute.

My visit to the rental office was quite unusual. Scratch that. Anyone else would have considered my visit unusual. I have grown rather accustomed to having complete strangers tell me their life stories. My husband claims there’s something about me that makes people feel close to me. I would love to think there’s some hidden gift I have to make others comfortable sharing their innermost thoughts and intimate experiences with me, but truth be told, I’ve always been nagged by the thought that maybe some people just have a tell-all personality. And maybe I just happen to run into an inordinate number of said people.

One of the big questions I’ve been pondering lately, and as part of my current journey, is my “next step” in life. I’ve been seriously considering going back to school to get a degree that would allow me to become a mental health counselor. I have long resisted the idea of doing so because of my tendency to take on the pain of others as my own. That has the potential to be truly disastrous for me if I can’t manage things well. Regardless, it’s a thought and desire that stays with me, and it seems affirmed by situations like the one I had today. Keep in mind… I haven’t spoken to many people since I left my family Saturday and certainly nothing more than the exchange of a few sentences. The first real conversation I have had since leaving was with a woman I’ve never met before (the property manager here) who spent forty-five minutes pouring her heart out to me about the recent death of her ten-day-old granddaughter. She shared intimate details about her loss, her son’s mourning, her granddaughter’s disease and the pain she’s been dealing with. I tried best I could to comfort her. Was this a sign? Serendipity? Coincidence?

My original thoughts from yesterday on serendipity seem difficult to spell out now, partly because there were so many of them and partly because I’m so overwhelmed by them. In an effort to share without writing a novel here, enjoy this compilation:

• Yesterday after my breakfast post I was looking around my blog and noticed that my link to Kathryn Antyr's Soul Journal blog had not been updated in a long time. It turns out she has a new blog home at True North Arts, and what post do I find when I visit?

• I took a random book with me to read during lunch yesterday that I bought years ago but had never even cracked the cover on and discovered an author who seemed to know every detail of my life and current quest. It was almost scary.

• I ended my day yesterday by watching Serendipity with John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale. Out of all the DVDs in our collection, how did that one make its way down here with me?

• Another quandary I’ve been exploring is turning my love of creating into an income. I have always hated trying to assign a value to the things I make, preferring instead to give my creations away. Despite my concerted efforts to limit my online activity right now to checking my personal email and blogging, I somehow found my way to this post by blogging dynamo and personal fave DudeCraft. (AND he quotes the Sutras... I *knew* I liked this guy!)

What this has all boiled down to for me is that the answers are out there. Take the time to ask your questions. More importantly, though, make time to listen for the answers. I realize not everyone can run away to a condo in south Florida, and maybe YOU don’t need to. Be willing to ponder. Be willing to receive. You will be blown away by what you learn in the process.