Today I write to you from a bench atop a hill in the Excelsior Commons overlooking Lake Minnetonka. My new office space can be best defined as “nomadic”. My true office is where-ever I settle in and do my work.
This is my bench today, and this is the view in several directions.
(remember to click on the image for a larger view)
I have done a lot of reflecting in the past several days, looking at the ministry and what my future looks like. I have “realized” that the life after the EPPD that I had imagined, dreamed about, has become a “reality”. I have “Realized my Dream”. This process is not as simple as you might think, because as I worked at the EPPD I was realizing and living that dream also. It has taken me some time to realize and appreciate the new dream because I have been mourning the loss of my old one. There has not been a day that I have regretted leaving, but there are many days that I have missed the work, the people, the comfort and security.
Transitions, especially ones this big, take time, patience and a plan. It has truly been just a couple of days since I realized what a gift I have in this new career and ministry. I got to have breakfast with retired EPPD Chief Jack Hacking this morning, went to Dunn Bros in Excelsior to catch up on e-mails, then I had a big choice to make. As I came out of the coffee shop, do I go left back to my comfortable 8×10 office with a window to the hallway and work on tax form applications …. or do I go right to the park by the lake and write this post. This is the first time since I retired that I went right. It’s the first time since retirement that I considered going right. It’s the first time since retirement that I “realized” I could go right.
Well it is time to head back to the office and do some administrative chores. But today has been and will always go down in the books as a good day, because I realized I can continue to live a dream, even if it is a different one.
So here is a final challenge to everyone reading this. Is the life you are living your dream? It just might be, but you don’t appreciate it because you haven’t realized it. So some time this week or next when you walk out the door, take a right instead of a left. That might be where you find your reality. (even if only for an hour or so).
