I am a lobster (stay with me on this one!).

On one of the forums I'm on someone posted the (long) excerpt below, which really resonated with where I am in my life at the moment. I finish my 4 days a week at the end of February. I have been asked and have decided to stay on for one day a week as a consultant, in one of the departments which I currently support. I am halfway through my hypnotherapist qualification and thinking about the business I will set up from it later in the year, and have just found a supervisor for my fourth year dissertation for my Psychology degree, which will be on an aspect of how toddlers use imitation to make sense of the world around them (I get to observe 25 toddlers at play, which might be someone else's idea of hell, but I can't wait, it won't feel like work at all!).

So, back to this lobster. There's a lot of change going on. I've not walked this road before, and frankly all this change is sometimes terrifying and overwhelming. Then I read this, and realised it's definitely time for me to shed my shell so I can grow and develop in the directions that are so attractive to me. Feel the fear and do it anyways. Life's too short. Just do it. Yes you can (thanks Obama!).

"I met an oceanographer who asked if I knew how a lobster was able to grow bigger when its shell was so hard. I had to admit that learning how lobsters grow had never been high on my list of priorities. But now that he had mentioned it, how in the world could a lobster grow? The only way, he explained, is for the lobster to shed its shell at regular intervals. When its body begins to feel cramped inside the shell, the lobster instinctively looks for a reasonably safe spot to rest while the hard shell comes off and the pink membrane just inside forms the basis of the next shell. But no matter where a lobster goes for this shedding process, it is very vulnerable. It can get tossed against a coral reef or eaten by a fish. In other words, a lobster has to risk everything in order to grow.

I found myself preoccupied with the lobster story for days after hearing it. I finally realized that it was a symbol. The lobster could teach us that the only way to endure the passage of time and the limits of our mortality is to know that we are growing and changing, that we are becoming more than we have been with each year of our lives.

We all know when our shells have gotten too tight. We feel angry or depressed or frightened because life is no longer exciting or challenging. We are doing the same old things and beginning to feel bored. Or we are doing things we hate to do and are feeling stifled in our shells. Some of us continue to smother in old shells that are no longer useful or productive. That way we can at least feel safe - nothing can happen to us. Others choose differently; even though we know we will be vulnerable - that there are dangers ahead - we realize that we must take risks or suffocate. This year I will shed my shell, despite the dangers, in order to get ready for new and better adventures. "