December 27, 2017, Spring Hill, Florida- 

I will be here, or thereabouts, for the next five days.  This week has usually been spent either in the cold of the Northeast or in sunny southern California.  Florida, specifically, the edge of the Tampa Bay area, where Spring Hill is located, is SoCal, but with a lot more moisture.  Last night’s rain has left the scent of the tropics, in its wake.

Back to my piece’s title:  2017 has taken me further out of my comfort zone than any year since 1981, when I first became half of a couple.  It’s damned hard to get over doing everything by and for oneself, yet not so hard to go back to that frame of mind, when a relationship ends/takes a non-physical form.  I can’t, however, just live for myself, anymore.  The world is in too much a state of travail. So, I write this blog, almost daily, I volunteer for the Red Cross, when I can, work with disabled students during the academic year, and work for the wider world, through the Baha’i Faith and its propagation efforts.

Relationship-wise, I am heartened by the large number of friends (and I do see you as such) with whom I converse on social media.  It is a leap for me, to converse with people I’ve never met, in a language other than English, but I am pushing myself to do this.  It is not hard for me to turn down “friendship requests” on social media, from random young women, or people claiming to be young women (usually bots), given my age and their friend pool, if there even is one, consisting entirely of people I don’t know.  For the record, I will befriend anyone who proves legitimate, and indeed have many friends and correspondents of both genders and of all ages.

Another transition I am starting to make is that of online entrepreneur.  I am taking this one step at a time, will interrupt this post to take part in a conference call, momentarily, and, despite the somewhat uncertain attitude of my sponsor towards me, I feel like this time, my coach and I can make some headway.

Good call, and I made a leap over one gap in my comfort zone:  Credit score, which is not as bad as I thought it might be.  Another leap over my comfort zone’s fence is thus more likely in the weeks ahead.  This is partly due to three changes that I have already engaged:  Increasing my waking hours by 30-45 minutes, in the morning; taken on a full-time job; and overcoming several lingering doubts about my self-worth.

So, Having looked at life, from several sides now, in the year that is coming to a close, I am ready to be far more proactive, in several areas of my life, than in the past.  There is more to sojourning, than travel, as much fun and as mind-expanding as that is.