Lately I’ve been a bit of a seminar junkie.

See how I managed to make that sound like a good and bad thing all rolled into one? That’s because it kind of is. If you go to too many seminars you can start to think that real actual life is like a seminar, and you can do / be / have anything that you want in this world.

Which is true. You can.

But it comes at a cost.

And that tricky, sticky second part is the bit that sometimes makes it a lie. Where the person you are lying to is your very own self.

What happens to me when I go to seminars, is that I get all crazy-excited about the possibilities that exist in the world, all of the things that I am going to get done the minute I walk in the door, all of the lives that I am going to change with my MASSIVE VISION of working with every chiropractor I know, (and some that I don’t…yet), to ensure that every Woman, Man and Child on this PLANET is able to have lifetime chiropractic care.

Yessiree Bob, that is what I am going to do. And I shall be doing it Right Now. I’ve waited long enough. In fact, far too long.

On the long, dark drive home I trace the white lines and make voice memos about all of the ways I will expand the coaching business I am part of to get more chiros doing their thing efficiently and effectively. I make plans of working with the other coaching businesses so they will do the same. I plan to extend my own practice working hours, so I can see all of the people I turn away every week. I make plans to extend my own workspace so that it can also house some young chiros who want to enrol in my big vision. It might sound tiring, but I get so completely buzzed on the very idea of it all that I don’t give a shit about tired. “Sleep when you’re dead,” I say to my self out loud. “Sleep is for losers,” I whisper into my brain, just in case it is thinking of betraying the fire in my heart.

My headlights reflect on the white of our garage, and for a moment I sit in the quiet and the still. I roll the last moments of clear thoughts around in my mouth and brain, before my Mumbrain takes over, where everything is filtered through the veil of Everyone Else.

And then I open the front door.

I’m greeted by the sounds and smells of our home. Kids giggling over some silly little trifle that has taken their fancy. The comforting scent of garlic, tomato and herbs from the Spag Bol that Nath has cooked up for our dinner. Perhaps even a chocolatey whiff of a nice bottle of red he has breathing on the bench. The grumble of the waves carried to our balcony with the onshore wind that grabs the door from my hand, slamming it open, and announcing my arrival to my people. Silence for a single beat, and then I’m engulfed with cries of “Mummy” as hot little bodies press against me, furry paws trample on my feet and threaten to knock me off my teetering seminar-heels, a rough scratch on my cheek and a trace of manly aroma, heralds that I am home.

And I am truly home. This is the place where I belong, and am loved and supported for my quirks and my squarks.

And yet a tiny part of my heart stays in my seminar world.

And just like the drug to the junkie who devotes his life to getting his next fix, it is a desire that scratches and worries around the edges of my brain, trying to make purchase and get some serious traction. No matter where am I or what I am doing, it’s there. Teasing and cajoling and trying to have it’s greed met.

To satisfy it, I put inspirational signs up around the house, placating it momentarily, even as I feel it building in intensity, whispering: “If not you, then who? If not now, then when?”

“I don’t know! I don’t know!” I scream back at the inside of my head, the words bouncing from cerebellum to frontal lobe and back again, over and over like a superball. “Leave me alone. I need time, time and well, time.”

But I don’t need time, not really. I just need to say what I really, really actually want. And figure out what I am willing to do to make it happen.

As we all do.

What do you really want?

And what are you willing to sacrifice to have it?

…From The Ashers