I’ve been thinking about opportunities lately. Over the last year I’ve been presented with many opportunities. Some disguised as changes or challenges or even as catastrophes. As we turn the calendar on March, I’m reminded that Spring is the season of opportunity where buds long dormant begin their trek toward blossoming. Sometimes it happens overnight. Just last week I noticed that from Tuesday to Thursday, the Bradford Pear tree outside my window transformed from a woven pattern of bare gray branches to a fluttering display of white-petaled blossoms.
As I’m considering the opportunities before me, more and more I’m feeling the weight of a choice — the choice between what is familiar and comfortable and what is new but uncertain. It’s the choice that must be mastered with virtually every opportunity. I’m recognizing about myself that often that place of familiar wins out simply because it has the assumption of security and stability. To reach toward something that is unknown is scary, even when the possibilities of that something are abundantly apparent.
This life doesn’t come with annotated step-by-step instructions. Each twist and turn in the road requires some sort of risk and unknown. The only alternative is to stay still and close off that every-widening journey of opportunity. When I take time to think about how I really want my life to be — my work life, my home life, my digital life, my inner life — I find that I don’t want to let simple familiarity govern my attempts to attain it. I want to embrace the opportunities that take me where I want to be. I don’t want to settle for simple security. I want to dare to imagine that day-to-day existence that inspires me. And I want to orchestrate whatever comes my way to help me achieve it. Thoreau expressed it well in his Walden treatise…
“if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavours to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”
Success unexpected in common hours. In finding the courage to choose to move in the direction of that life we imagine, we are most assured of success. Each step toward what we dream brings with it the freedom and joy of moving. Moving forward. Moving toward something, even if that movement contains a little retracing.
That’s the inspiration for this month’s desktop wallpaper design. I want to reach forward. Spring forward. Even March forward. And, as I begin acting with confidence, reclaiming areas where I’ve surrendered my dreams to the commonplace for the sake of what’s simply become habit, I find myself gaining that familiarity that was so comfortable. I find myself gaining a familiarity with my own dreams, with my own abilities, with my own voice, with my own direction, with my own confidence and courage. So, I weigh those opportunities, and I know. I know from that most familiar place–the heart of me–what will get me closer to that dream. I know what it feels like to reject standing still. To move forward.
[Click the desktop wallpaper version above to download and enjoy with your technology and grab these iphone and ipad wallpaper version as well.]
Hello & welcome! I’m Haley Montgomery, and I’m the designer and owner of 
