Someday lost its excuse

Most people keep a someday list somewhere. Yours might be written down somewhere or it might just live in the back of your head. The trip. The instrument. The certification. The business you would start. The thing you told yourself you would get to once life settled down a little. Every item on that list was waiting on the same two things: time and money. And for years that was a completely honest accounting. You did not have much of either, so the list sat exactly where it was, perfectly safe.

Both of them have arrived now, and neither one announced itself. The money shows up as an account that stops draining the way it used to, in amounts that look small weekly and serious annually. The time shows up as hours that used to go to smoking and to the errands around it. No ceremony, no windfall, no letter in the mail. Just two hard constraints quietly lifting off while you were busy congratulating yourself about the streak. The list has lost its excuse.

Which is uncomfortable, and that is worth saying plainly. A someday list is a very comfortable object to own. As long as the obstacles were real, the list got to stay a wish, and a wish can never fail at anything. Move the obstacles and the wish turns into a to do list, and a to do list can be neglected in a way that shows. This is the actual reason people stall out at this stage, and it has nothing to do with cravings. It is easier to want a life than to start one.

So take one item and one small step this week. Not the whole thing, and not a plan for the whole thing. Look up what the course costs. Send the message. Price the flight. Put the thing in a room where you will trip over it. That is enough to convert a wish into something with a beginning, and that beginning is what you were asking God for when you asked to get out of this. You wanted your life back. It is back. Go spend some of it.