The gray skies loomed above me, and I sighed.
“Great,” I thought. “Driving in the rain. Again.”
I loaded my car to leave my parents’ house in Oklahoma and head back to Houston, and I planned to make my usual stop in Arlington to see my godchildren. This breaks up the solo 8-hour drive for me.
I reached Arlington after enduring a few rain showers, but nothing too bad. When I woke up the next morning, I could hear the familiar crack of thunder and rain. Watching the weather, I saw the rain and the weekday rush hour traffic would ease up in a couple of hours.
When I entered the soaked freeway, patches of blue sky were to my left, and the dark clouds filled with rain wafted on my right. I plowed ahead on the freeway.
Once I was free of Dallas, I made my way on the interstate. Instead of the rain and dark clouds easing up outside of the city, the gloom stubbornly hung overhead.
I kept driving despite the intermittent showers, knowing I would eventually see blue skies again. Every now and again, I would see patches of blue sky peeking through the gloom, and I thought I was close to reaching the end of the storms.
When you’re driving by yourself, it’s amazing the things you ponder. I wondered if friendly aliens came to Earth, would they like chicken parmesan, Scandal and jeans? I thought how I need to regularly meditate instead of now and again. I thought about the blog posts I needed to write for my blog and other people, and blog posts make me think about organizing and productivity since that’s what I write about.
As my mind and my car continued our respective journeys, I thought about how I was driving toward my goal of going home. Usually, I break the trip into little steps – much like how I encourage my clients to breakdown large projects into smaller steps. Instead of looking at the number of miles to Houston, I would look at the miles to the next town and feel accomplished when I reached it.
On this trip, I found myself looking at the miles to Houston. As we say in Texas, go big or go home, and I was going big and going home. Despite the rain and gloom, I was going for the big goal. I was driven (no pun intended).
It would have been easy to stay in Arlington for another night and hope for better weather the next day. It would have been easy to stop and wait around for the rain to let up. It would have been easy to turn back and go where I came from. I didn’t choose easy. I kept going.
With our goals, we have to push forward – despite the gloom surrounding us. It can help to set those smaller milestones so you know you’re on the right path. Sometimes you just need to push through the gloom and rain toward the unguaranteed promises of blue sky ahead.
