Tag: The Navigator

Hero in Progress

Course Locked: Staying on Track After Choosing a Direction

Mell D'Clute
SuperMell stands at the helm of a wooden sailing ship at night, wearing sleek black and purple superhero gear with a stylized wing-like M across her back, a purple belt, gloves, and subtle purple glasses or mask. She gently steers the ship across a calm ocean, where a faint drifting path trails behind and a brighter corrected course curves forward. To the right, a lighthouse on a rocky shore shines a strong beam of light across the water, guiding the way. The Navigator stands nearby, calm and observant, offering quiet direction. On the deck, Diana, a mostly black cat with golden eyes, black paws, and a small white tuft on her chest, watches the sweeping lighthouse beam like a playful red dot. The scene is softly lit by moonlight and stars, with a peaceful, reflective mood focused on course correction and steady progress.

After the Decision, Before the Drift

Choosing a direction is often the easy part. Sticking to it is where things get harder.

Once you’ve chosen a direction, it usually feels right… at first. Unfortunately, that feeling doesn’t always last. Doubt begins to creep in, and you start second-guessing yourself.

Choosing the path is one moment. Staying on the path is many different moments.

The Drift Begins

I sometimes wonder if this is my ADHD, or if everyone experiences this. You decide to take a certain course of action. But as soon as you decide to do it, you suddenly lose your momentum. Where do I begin? It seems like too much work. Oh! I know! Maybe I’ll write another blog post instead.

The Procrastinator likes to have his fun with decisions like these. What? You want to actually do something about it? That sounds exhausting. Let’s play Arkham City instead.

It’s almost as if the second I declare my intention, it vanishes. Then I have to come back and choose the path once again, only maybe take a different route. Sometimes I wish The Navigator was clearer about the direction.

I tend to get easily distracted. There’s just so much entertainment at hand these days that I find it sometimes hard to stick to my goals. Sometimes I tend to declare a “brain day” and want to relax and veg out. Sometimes it comes from not knowing what happens after I reach the goal. Or even worse, what if I fail to achieve the goal? What will I do then? That’s when the self-doubt starts creeping in.

The Navigator Doesn’t Steer the Ship

The Navigator’s job is to give me a direction to sail in. I still have to do the work. I have to show up, act, and decide repeatedly. It’s still up to me to follow through on the decision. It’s not always easy to listen to her. But I know she knows what’s best for me.

The Navigator points the way. She doesn’t hold the wheel. That’s my job.

Course Corrections Are Not Failures

Psychologists tend to frown when you speak in absolutes. They call it “faulty thinking” – when you believe in all-or-nothing thinking, for instance. I have to finish this goal completely before I can start my next one. This has been my frame of mind since I moved in and have been organizing and cleaning my home. Once I finish cleaning the home, I can declare this task done and figure out what to do next.

That is an example of all-or-nothing thinking. And it also serves as a handy excuse for why I don’t move on to a new goal. This way, I won’t try it and fail miserably at it. I know this is why I tend to stall at finishing cleaning my apartment. I’m scared of what happens next.

It’s important for me to remember that staying on track doesn’t mean I have to do it consistently. I can always pick it back up when I’m ready. Also, just because I make a decision to do something doesn’t mean that I have to do it perfectly. Sometimes course changes are required. That’s still The Navigator guiding me toward a better path. Small adjustments are part of the process.

And so what if I do drift from the goal? Does that mean I’ve failed? Of course not. I can pick it back up where I left off. I can steer this ship back on course. Even Voyager took detours along the journey home. No matter what detour they would take, they’d always find a way back to their journey home… sometimes even finding a quicker way to do it than they knew about before.

How I Stay on Track (Most of the Time)

I still go by what I feel like doing in the moment. If I feel like tackling a cleaning project, I’ll do it. If I’m tired, I listen to my energy level and rest. Sometimes I ask ChatGPT to give me a “realistic” schedule for cleaning with a specific due date, and space it out so I don’t overdo it. Like last weekend, I had two main goals to achieve, one in the morning before sleep and one in the evening after sleep. I would even set alarms to go off at the time I thought would work. I don’t always start right away, though. Sometimes I need more time to ease into it.

When I break things into small steps, they feel much easier to complete. Then I actually feel like I’ve achieved something, almost like finishing a level in a video game.

I do find it difficult to do tasks after I work though… I’m still trying to figure out that balance. But I know I’ll figure it out. I can’t do everything everywhere all at once. Who can? (That’s a great movie, by the way…)

My stardrive is still online. I get these microbursts of energy and use those to tackle a small thing with a time limit of no more than one hour.

When I Don’t Stay on Track

Of course, there are still days where I don’t feel like doing much of anything useful. But I’ve decided that that’s okay. I have nothing to prove to anyone. I already know I’m capable.

I did organize the whole apartment (except for the paperwork… but that will come later.) I thought organizing the closet racks in the living room was going to take forever, and it didn’t. It was quite intimidating to see all those boxes in the second bedroom, but I eventually crushed it and even turned the second bedroom into a room with a purpose (a.k.a. my Creative Studio).

So I know I’m capable of great things if I put my focus on it, and do one item at a time. That’s the same approach I took towards cleaning my home over the weekend. Now all that’s left is dusting the living room, sweeping, and mopping. That’s it.

It’s okay if I have a day after work here and there where I’m more inclined to sit down on the couch and stream for a while. Because I know this isn’t permanent—I always find my way back.

Diana Doesn’t Drift—She Just Chooses Again

Diana is the queen of following her instincts. If something is going on outside, she has to run back and forth from the front of the house to the back to let me know something’s afoot! (Or aflight, as the case may be…) She doesn’t overthink direction. She just goes. And if she’s decided she’s had enough bird watching and just wants to take a nap, then she follows that instinct as well. She doesn’t feel bad if she doesn’t catch the red dot. That just makes her more determined the next time it shows up. I know some day she’ll catch that thing!

Final Thought: Staying the Course Isn’t About Perfection

Choosing a direction is the easy part. Following through can be tougher to do. It’s important to be realistic in what you can achieve and schedule in lots of padded time for those days when you feel like couch surfing. I’m learning that listening to the Navigator is the right path for me to take.

Staying on track isn’t about never drifting. It’s about noticing—and choosing the path again.

How do you follow through with a decision? What’s your approach? Please feel free to share it in the comments. I’d love to hear about it.

Emotional Cartography

Charting the Path: Learning to Trust The Navigator

Mell D'Clute
SuperMell steers a calm pirate ship under a starry night sky while The Navigator points toward the stars to guide the way, and Diana the black cat plays with a fish on the deck.

After the Storm, Before the Course Is Set

Charting the path is never easy. There are always too many factors to consider—and then there’s the constant pain in the ass known as timing.

Things aren’t as chaotic as they’ve been, though some things are still a little tense. Sometimes the direction is obvious, but not always. Finding the right path is part of the journey.

I’m currently standing at a crossroads. Where do I begin? What direction do I go in from here? This is where listening to The Navigator comes in.

Introducing The Navigator

This is a continuation of my Emotional Cartography exploration. In an attempt to understand how my thoughts and emotions affect me, I have identified some key characters that influence a particular area.

The Navigator is the character I’ve imagined who sets the course, making sure to adjust for tides or inclement weather. She doesn’t just navigate by maps and charts. Sometimes she uses her gut instincts. In fact, sometimes I think of her as my own internal compass—or my intuition.

She isn’t loud or overbearing in any way. A gentle nudge here, a whisper there. There’s nothing urgent about her message. The Navigator is a quiet presence who suggests direction, rather than demands it.

When the Signal Gets Lost

Because she’s not so brash, I sometimes have difficulty hearing her. There have been times when she’s tried to get my attention more urgently to stop doing something that wasn’t the direction I should be sailing in. But I didn’t heed her word, so now she’s more reserved.

It can be difficult to hear her whispers. I’m sometimes prone to listening to Dr. Anxiety or The Depression Beast and wind up acting rashly, impulsively, and reactive. She can wind up being drowned out by these sometimes more obnoxious and louder emotions.

How I Hear Her Now

Sometimes I have to drown out the noisier thoughts and emotions. To do this, I have to be silent. Meditation can help, though that’s when these characters tend to show up, waving their hands and shouting to get my attention. This isn’t The Navigator’s style.

To me, listening to The Navigator means quieting the inner critic, outside influences, and background noise. Once things settle, her voice becomes clearer—not loud, but certain.

This is where seeing her as my intuition comes in. She’s the little voice—or conscience—that tells you exactly what is the right course of action to take in the moment. You can feel her in your gut, or solar plexus. If you act against her, you’ll feel pain in your stomach, or sometimes butterflies. But when you listen to her and follow her guidance, you get a tingling sensation. You feel like you’re glowing from the inside out.

If anything, The Navigator is your authentic self. She’s the part of you that already knows the right direction—even when you don’t want to hear it.

Navigation in Practice

Listening to The Navigator is a lot like following your gut instincts. Deep down you know what the right path to take is. For example:

  • Choosing what to-do to work on right now:
    Tonight I tidied the living room, tested a video game system, made spaghetti, and then chose to write this blog.
  • Deciding when to rest:
    Writing this post might feel like work, but for me it’s restful—especially when I’m exploring these emotions.
  • Picking the next step in my blog:
    Even when I ask ChatGPT for ideas, The Navigator still decides what feels right—and how I approach it.

When I Ignored the Warning Signs

But wait! Didn’t you say she urgently tried to stop me from doing something! Yes, that’s so very true. Quite a long time ago when I turned 30, I decided I needed to get married. That is a time period I now refer to as my “temporary insane” era. She was screaming at me before I got married to not do it. I could feel her getting more and more tense the closer I got to the wedding, and indeed for the brief time I was married. She knew this guy wasn’t right for me and this wasn’t the right decision for me to make.

I felt intense pain in my gut, but chose to ignore it for a while. It wasn’t until I finally stopped myself and listened to her, then I realized it wasn’t worth it and ended the marriage.

Dr. Anxiety had made me feel like I had to prove myself to others that I would be a success, and married by 30 seemed like that was a goal I had to achieve. The problem is I didn’t have a good self-esteem at the time and chose someone who wasn’t right for me. A little while later, I heard Barbara Walters say in an interview with Oprah that “If you’re going to get married, and you have a heavy heart going into it, don’t do it.”

That “heavy heart” feeling is what I experienced when The Navigator was trying to tell me this wasn’t right.

Diana, Unbothered and On Course

I’m sure cats have that inner instinct or Navigator, but it looks like she obeys that voice. When she’s hungry, she eats, or meows loudly if her bowl is almost empty. If she’s tired, she sleeps. Sometimes she gets a sudden impulse to run around the apartment at full speed from one end of the building to the other. She has no problem hearing that inner voice.

Final Thought: Trust the Quiet Signal

It’s important to start charting the path as early as you can. The good news is it’s never too late to change course and sail away in a different direction. Listening to The Navigator is sometimes difficult to do, but it’s always the right decision to make.

When has The Navigator spoken to you? Did you listen? Tell me about it in the comments. I love a good story.