The Season of Intention

My adult life has gone through several, let’s say…seasons. I’ll skip the perfunctory (college, first job, promotions, etc) and try to find my way to a more profound season that I’ve recently alighted on: the season of intention.

Now, that’s not to say that those other seasons aren’t a big part on how I arrived where I currently am…as they totally are. It’s just that, in thinking about this blog post today, I found that a lot of my more “generic” seasons of life amounted to a lot of similarly generic adecdotes.

Were they important enough to talk about?

Absolutely.

So will you, then, talk about them?

Actually, no.

Trust me and let’s skip over the bulk of what got me here. Let’s write/read this blog with intention. And, in doing that, let’s be cool with the fact that we will be intentionally skipping over many events to arrive in the here and now. I’ll even say I’m doing it in the name of economy and saving all that for another day’s blog (and that’s not entirely untrue).

Yes, well…fine.

First, some context. My family is everything to me. This includes my wife Carla, our two dogs Penny and Han Solo, and our cats (which I shall not name here in hopes of not being judged for the amount of cats we may or may not have). I love them all dearly, but Carla is my everything. She is easily the most impactful person in my life. The reason that I’m the person I am today who can sit here writing this blog to you and have the audacity to attempt to write a book? My CLM.

I tend to gush, but this is related…I promise.

Carla and my’s relationship has taught me so much about how important it is to be intentional in the things that you do. When I say this, I mean everything from how one spends their free time to how one plans their daily, weekly, etc. life. I was sleepwalking through life when I met Carla. I had no intention in anything that I was doing and largely never had. My life was the result of tacitly developing the habit of never living with intention. I never meant to do this, but I just kind of defaulted into it. Time would just elapse. Things did or didn’t happen. Shoulders shrugged. And though I couldn’t see it then, I can see it clear as day from here: I was standing still.

Zip ahead a bit and I meet Carla while I’m teaching a high school band camp. Her younger brother was marching baritone that year and she had graduated the year prior. Her best friend at the time was one of the snare drums in the drumline I was helping to teach. This will be at least another post (probably several), but suffice to say: love at first sight. We eventually began to date, moved in together, got engaged, and have been married nearly sixteen years.

In the past few years especially, some big changes have happened in our lives. I had a pretty serious surgery, we left our long time jobs in the local county school system, and we went virtual and started to exclusively work from home. All of these (except the surgery, of course) were pretty great things and helped to improve our quality of life.

Well, ok…maybe the surgery did that, too. Another post for another day!

So, with this new work from home life, we found that there was a lot of extra time. No leaving the house to work meant no commuting. This alone gave us back so much more of our lives. And, while was a complete blessing to us then and is still to us now, if helped me see something more clearly:

I was not living intentionally.

Instead, I was ever waiting on things to happen. I was missing out on big opportunities to grow closer to my wife and be a happier and more fulfilled person…and for what?

Side note: one good thing I learned from my vengeful percussion professor from college…

“Don’t be a habit rabbit.”

Alas…I had become the thing I was taught to fear: a habit rabbit. My actions lacked initiative and purpose, instead being reactive or consequential at best. This started to really show in our new season of life and amidst it’s prominence of time, the one thing we had lacked so much of in previous seasons.

Before? We never had any time. I mean, I’m sure we did here and there, but largely…we were always busy. Here’s an example: when we were in college, we’d commute an hour one way daily and then commute an hour back to then work at and close the local McDonald’s. We did this for years. When we graduated and got jobs, I was immediately a band director and in the throes of all the extra-curricular tasks that came with it (pep band, concerts, marching band, etc).

Now though: time is on our side. And, I’m making the choice to live intentionally. It’s still easy to fall into that ‘habit rabbit’ role and I’m working on it daily. To my wife: I’m sorry it took me so long to see and thank you so much for being infinitely patient with me.

So…live intentionally. Take initiative and be accountable. It sounds kid of lame, but I promise it actually rocks.

Intentionally,
Bryce