Sometimes the path of least resistance is a slide.  I wrote that in my last Sunday gratitude and I’ve been thinking about it non-stop.  It came to me entirely unexpectedly.  I think the announcement of the departure of a fixture in the place I’ve worked my entire adult life has shaken me up to the point where I know a different action is needed now.  I don’t think this is a bad thing because I’ve known for a long time that I needed to make a choice and walk in the direction that calls to me rather than continue to waste my time doing work that supports me but doesn’t fulfill me.  But I stuck that path because it has taken care of me for a long time, it was easy, and it was familiar.  I knew how far I could push the limit, I knew what I could get away with so to speak.  But I also hated having to ask for permission for anything.  I started working there right as I was graduating high school and going into college and I was in such a student mentality and believed that we always had to do what we were told that I’ve repeated that pattern for years.  I’ve pushed the limits of it, always—like I worked really hard for you, I expect lenience in what my day looks like and when I do the work I do.  But I’ve also asked for permission for things I needed in my day to day life, things that other people just did.  I didn’t understand that I could do that too.  I felt like I had to put my identity on hold when I was at that place and somehow fit in what I wanted to do with my life around my time there.

And that became who I was—I was quite literally living a double life. I’ve seen the changes coming for a long time because we were bought out several years ago and this is the inevitable result of giving ourselves over to someone else.  Still we continued down the path of least resistance, doing what we know every day.  All the times I lost myself, all the times I thought I was climbing again, only to realize I was sliding face first into the exact same patterns I’d repeated for decades, all of this I realized as I listened to the staple of our organization, the last executive who belonged with us tell us he was leaving us behind.  I landed, hard, and realized that the slide was no longer fun.  This path wasn’t leading me anywhere except back to the top of the slide and this was a game I no longer wanted to play.  I’d already been trying to get out of line to create something for myself and this was evidence that it’s time to exit the game, and to do that, I need a more aggressive plan.  I need to start forging a new path.  I’ve cut a circle in the dirt with all the times I’ve walked this place and now I need to step over and head in a new direction.  I take solace in knowing that if someone I’ve looked up to (because I have always liked this man) was able to make the decision to start again somewhere entirely new, to close this portion of his life, then perhaps that is the point I need to get to.

I’ve been doing a lot of letting go.  I’ve shed 38 pounds—letting go of the dependence on food.  I’ve been carefully planning the things I want to do into my life instead of talking about them and waiting for them to happen—taking responsibility for creating the life I want.  I recently let go of most of the baby clothes I had, saving only the milestone pieces–this is an admission that I will not be having anymore children, that is officially a closed chapter.  I’ve been working piecemeal on side projects for years.  I’ve been looking at other job opportunities for years.  All the while I’ve been going to the same place, driving the same path, ending up in the same town, at the same job, seeing the same people, that I have for years.  I’ve watched some of them leave and was sad.  Now I watch the last piece walk away and I know that I need to look at this differently now.  Again, when we make the choice to change it’s easier to swallow and we feel in control—at least a little bit– of what we do.  I realize that I’ve taken too long with the change and I’ve started to create a path in the land of in-between.  Thinking I’m changing but really I’m just changing enough to create a new pattern that still sustains me where I’m at.  It’s the same thing I’ve talked about with getting comfortable in the past, in the nostalgia of it.  So this letting go is different.  This time I’m not getting back in line for the slide.  It’s time to say goodbye to the childish beliefs and practices I still clung to.  It’s time to turn the page of this long run-on-sentence of a book with repeating patterns.  It’s time to begin again.