Reimagine: A Life That Fits

When you are asked to re-imagine your life, it can be a big challenge. At least, it was for me.

I have spent much of my life trying to be “normal,” so that was where my mind went first: to what a normal life is supposed to look like according to society’s rules. I already knew that picture didn’t fit me, but it was surprisingly easy to fall back into imagining what was expected rather than what might actually work for me.

Once I began looking more closely, guilt arrived too. I wanted—or needed—things that seemed different from what I was supposed to want. I have written before about wanting a normal life, but many of the things I meant were simply things other people appear to take for granted. Re-imagine made me realize that I needed to stop measuring my life against that idea of normal before I could see what I genuinely wanted.

The first wants and needs were ordinary enough.

I want the courage to walk outside during the winter. I have a strong fear of falling on ice, and while that fear is not unreasonable, I don’t want it to keep me indoors for an entire season. I want to find safe ways to continue wandering, keep my curiosity alive and keep my body moving.

I want food that does not require elaborate preparation but is still healthy enough to eat regularly. I want a cleaning routine that does not disappear because I have been away from home for a few days. I need something that can survive interruptions and show me how to begin again after a longer break.

I want to do simple things such as showering and brushing my teeth more regularly. Those are not habits I grew up with. I lived without running water, electricity or indoor plumbing well into my teens, so these routines were not embedded in childhood. Learning them later has been a struggle, and even now caring for my body in those ways does not happen automatically.

I want to keep walking. I want Aquafit, or some other form of outside exercise, to remain part of my life. I also want companionship—people I can talk with, laugh with and practise being social around without every connection having to become a deep friendship.

These may be things many people take for granted, but for me they remain difficult. That does not make them too small to belong in a vision for my life. It makes them honest.

Then there was the question of organization.

I do not do well with a strict schedule. A day divided into fixed times quickly becomes boring and restrictive, and eventually I fight against it. But I don’t do well with broad categories and completely unstructured time either. “Do something creative” offers so many possible directions that I may choose nothing, or follow a fascinating rabbit hole for hours without finishing anything I meant to do.

I need something between those two extremes.

A clear starting point helps. So does a recognizable stopping point—but not necessarily a time limit that says I must work for two hours. Sometimes a piece takes twenty minutes, and sometimes it takes several days. These blog posts are a good example. I try to publish once a week, but sometimes the central idea takes longer to reveal itself. A rigid deadline cannot make that discovery happen faster.

What I eventually found was that a life that fits me needs five things working together. It begins with discovery—something I have not already mastered, seen or understood that charges my curiosity and makes me want to explore further. For that interest to last, the discovery must connect with something meaningful to me. It also needs momentum: the initial thought must lead into something I can continue exploring or give form to, such as a Daybook page, a blog post, a series of photographs or another question, rather than ending as a short mental exercise. I need enough flexibility to change the time, method or direction when circumstances require it. Finally, I need recognition: some way to understand what the experience added to my life, whether I completed something, learned something, felt something or simply enjoyed where it led me.

Those five conditions gave me something more useful than an idealized picture of the future. They gave me a way to tell whether a plan might actually fit.

What I am taking into Reshape is a small set of principles.

The plan must support the life I actually lead, not an imaginary perfect life. It must make ordinary things easier without turning my days into a timetable. It must provide fuel for my curiosity through small adventures and opportunities for discovery. It must make room for casual connection through things such as classes, tours, activity groups or coffee and conversation.

It must also give me specific places to begin without deciding every detail for me. It needs enough flexibility for low-energy days, foggy days and days when I simply do not feel like doing what I thought I would. Most importantly, it needs a way for me to return after illness, travel or interruption without treating the break as failure.

I began Reimagine believing I had to picture a different life. Instead, I discovered the conditions that would help me live my own life more fully.

I do not need a perfect plan or a conventional future. I need ordinary supports, continuing discovery, room for connection and enough structure to help me begin without taking away my freedom.

I do not need to become someone else to create a life that fits me.