When things become less busy. When the project is finished. When everything is a little clearer.
Then there will be time to stay in touch, move without rushing, think about direction or begin the thing that has interested us for years. It sounds reasonable. We cannot do everything at once. Some periods require focus and flexibility.
I wonder how we notice when a temporary arrangement has begun to write a permanent way of life. When each new phase looks different, but the promise to ourselves is postponed in exactly the same way.
Exceptions teach us too
Every choice rehearses something. When I move something important to me into the future again, I am also practising postponing it. When I always reply immediately, other people learn my availability, and I learn to expect the same from myself.
Nobody has to intend harm for this to happen. A temporary arrangement may originally be the best possible solution. But its reason may need reconsidering even after the habit has become established.
That is why ‘just a little longer’ sometimes needs a more precise ending. Until when? What changes afterwards? Who notices if the end date moves again?
Not everything has to change at once
There are also situations in which a person cannot simply decide to make more room in life. Caring responsibilities, finances or another difficult period can genuinely limit the options. Grand statements about personal choice can then feel unreasonable.
Perhaps the question can be smaller: what matters to me that could have a place in this phase already, even a little? Not a perfect life in the future, but a recognisable part of my own life now.
One arranged meeting. Ten minutes with a thought of my own. One boundary that does not need justifying again every day. A small thing does not solve everything, but it can remind me that my life does not begin only once the circumstances are ready.
I want to take what I postpone seriously too. The calendar shows the choices that actually happened. The repeated ‘once this is over’ may reveal what has not yet been given a place among them.
And sometimes the person waiting is me.
