I am sitting on a train, fog outside the windows, the gentle quiet of commuters inside, just the odd rustling of a newspaper, the click of a keyboard, the hushed wintertime cough. Trains are conducive to thinking. It’s aided by my ipod playing Birdy’s new album into my ears (if you don’t have it already, you may want to consider it a priority. It’s worth it.)

We pass train stations of passengers waiting for their next train, lights of oncoming cars barely penetrating the fog. Coffee cups swirl with steam, watches are checked, emails are being answered on mobile devices while the dawn’s chorus still slumbers on. I have a long full day ahead of me, and my memories are of two sleepy little people kissing me goodbye and waving before settling into their cornflakes.

I am like the other commuters – moderately depressed over the current economic climate. Yearning for Christmas or, in shorter term, the weekend. Terrified of unemployment, which seems to be creeping upon the world like a tide. I tell myself it will get better and then I tighten my belt. It’ll be worth it, I think. It’s going to be ok.

I know of others who are struggling due to choices they made. I no longer look at things as black and white, I don’t think they are right or wrong – they simply made a choice, and the consequences (good or bad) are ones that we live with. Mostly because just up ahead is another fork in the road, another option they can explore.

I think about the choices we make. It all comes down to one choice, no matter how vast your roadmap is in your life. Our lives are a complicated visio matrix and if you tried to map it, you would see in our Choose Your Own Adventure there is always one key page, one key area, where our choices tumbled out like a river after one item. Just one.

And if your choice is like mine, it’s one that you would never have expected.

I remember where I was. I remember the room, the name of the man in the room with me. I remember the time of year, the papers on the desk, the lights in my eyes. It was my then-manager (a man who was barely a blip in the radar) who handed a binder across a desk with me. It was a thick white three-ring binder, with a printed page tucked into the front. I was in Dallas, Texas, and I was being offered my own technical course to write and to teach. I remember the product – something obscure and long gone now, but life changing at the time.

At least for me.

My entire life is mapped with choices (many of them bad). But where I am today and who I ultimately have become in my career and to a larger extent in my heart, is down to a three ring binder.

When I read my old blog entries, when I think about who I am, I am struck by one thing – what a life I’ve lived. I can never be accused of not living, me. I’ve managed to pack as much as possible into the tin of my 37 years.

I re-read some of my Santa posts yesterday. Reading them I am hit with two things – I am pretty seriously soppy sentimental, and I am impressed by the way I write (what an egotistic thing to say, I know). I have let my writing – both blog and fiction – slack a bit, because of my health issues predominately. Another choice made, even if it was subconscious. I’m picking the reigns of both of them back up again, and hopefully the writing will sort itself out and improve.

Until then I ride trains, I participate in meetings, I watch “Abney and Teal” (which I actually kind of like) with two little people tucked under the wells of my arms, I have a glass of wine with my husband while we watch TV under the quiet of a foggy November evening, and I make choices.

All linked back to one white binder.

I wonder if everyone can see their life’s roadmap as clearly.

-S.