As we move out of lockdown and into something close to what we previously understood as normal life, there is a sense of trepidation. Some feel nervous, embarking on life outside the home again – if you are living with anxiety, there might have been something comforting about the level of control and consistency that lockdown life can bring, even as the news outside raged.

But there is also a great opportunity here. I feel my life is a blank canvas for the first time since my teenage years, when life seemed to open out before me with endless opportunity and possibility.

What is it that I want to put back into my life? Who are the people that I want to spend my time and energy with? How will I balance the things I have gained during this strange period (a beautiful garden, more time for reading, silence and repose), with my desire to see new things (travel, the ocean, enlightening exhibitions)?

I am also 50 this year, which seems to mark a turning point. There have been others, the turn of each decade seems to bring some new focus to life that wasn’t there before: young children in my 30s, work in my 40s and now this: grown up children who are a delight, treading their newly independent paths, increasingly away from home.

As I take some time to contemplate the colours, textures and accents with which I plan to paint, the one thing I know I don’t want to do is rush.

There are some spaces that I will certainly leave blank: time, space, yoga and the luxury of silence are the four corners of living well for me. But as for the things I will positively choose to paint across my canvas? They will be deliberately and carefully chosen. This is not the Jackson Pollock of my early years as a mother, the sombre Rothko of my early 40s or the riotous Keith Haring of my 20s. This is something that only I can paint, with my half century of lived experience and wisdom.

I fully intend to consider each stroke of the brush carefully, to choose wisely and from my own instinct. The shining white spaces are very important and I will guard them carefully, but there will also be joyful explosions of colour and the paler shades of quiet times with beloveds; the dark shadows we all must face will be embraced by that colour and light.

I simply don’t have room for the fruitless, pointlessly noisy brightness that shouts the loudest but contains scant benefit. I choose something different this time. How will you paint yours?

When you become aware that there is something new out there for you, some new place to be, or a new way of living; when a new project beckons you, tantalisingly from the edges of your consciousness, but you don’t know where to begin.

When you see that you might be healthier, wiser, kinder if you chose differently.

When you remember that life can be exciting and there are new things to learn, new places to discover, new experiences to have.

When you ask after that new thing that is calling you: What are you? What is it that is wanted of me? How could this life of mine be different; how might it be better?' When curiosity rises in you.

When that project that you have always wanted to begin, but have never known how, keeps whispering to you fom the sidelines. When you have heard that voice for years and you still haven't started.

Just begin.

When your old friend Fear stands in your way, blocking the path and tells you that you are safe where you are now; what you have is enough and who are you to think that you could ever do this new thing, this new project of yours.

Even then, just begin.

Your fears try to keep you safe by keeping things the same; but your fears are getting in your way.

Then comes Procrastination. Think of all of the things you need to do before you can begin: you need to clear things away; you need to build things up; you need more knowledge; you need to be ever so slightly different (slimmer, fitter, smarter, braver, less tired, more financially secure).

Look closer: Procrastination is only fear in disguise.

Everything begins inside of us: it is an inkling, an instinct, a desire. But it must move from our heads to our hearts to our hands if anything is to be made of it.

You plant a bulb in the winter and you can't imagine that from that hopeless looking, dried out thing, will come the most encouraging growth, the most beautiful colour, just when you need to see it at the cold beginning of next Spring.

One word
One stitch
One step
One phone call
One click of the mouse
One conversation where you admit your secret plans to a beloved friend

We already know we're not in it for the glory; we're in it for the love; we're in it because we are in the habit of tuning in to what is wanted of us and we're committed to using the unique gifts that we have been given, because, well, that's what they were given to us for.

I'm not talking about other people's gifts (some people have such intimidating gifts and that can be discouraging); I'm talking about your gifts and mine; our small gifts to use and share and relish in our own small communities. I never did want to stand up in front of the whole world, did you? I wanted to do my own beloved little thing here, in the place where I live among the people who make me happy.

Don't get waylaid any more. Now you know that you want to begin, begin.