“We weren’t as happy as they were in earlier decades, but we were happy.  We made love and fell asleep to this song in the 90’s and woke up today; what a time machine music can be,” unknown.  I have a little bit of a nostalgia post.  In reconciling the need to live my life all the way up, without restraint, and honoring the work my entire lineage did before me, I have a moment to discuss.  I see all the work they did and how they had the same feelings I have about wanting to do something else and be something more and I see how they consistently held themselves back.  I was listening to some music from my younger days and now people my age are coming back to it and making comments like the ones listed above.  And I suddenly feel even more connected to my parents and what happens as we get older.  Suddenly we feel our youth slipping away like our trajectory is taken out of our own hands and we are thrust on this path from someone else.  There is so much potential in youth and we spend so much time trying to stifle that in kids—I do the same thing to my son.  I want him to be respectful and listen and do what he’s told.  And, with the exception of the respect thing, why is that so important? 

I always did exactly what I was told and when I had to lie or manipulate to get what I really wanted I felt guilty.  Perhaps more accurately, I felt guilt at doing and being what I wanted to be and feeling it necessary to lie or manipulate to get what I wanted.  Why do we do that to our kids?  I don’t want my son to feel guilty for being himself because I felt guilt all the time.  I had this power, I FELT this power in me and I used to challenge adults as kids, but I couldn’t find my footing with those people my own age so I felt weak.  I felt like I couldn’t get anywhere with what I wanted to do.  WE always think the past was easier and better and I think I finally get it: there was ENDLESS potential in the past.  We hadn’t decided who we were, we FELT who we were and we did that without fear until we were told not to.  There is always a moment when we decide to give up who we are for who we are told to be.  And we live in conflict with that because we know we feel something else but our actions don’t support that.  Our entire history of humanity has been nothing but a giant experiment to figure out what works best as individuals and as a whole and we have found some really good points in time and we have some really dark moments.  It isn’t that we were happier, it’s that we had more options.  And options I guess do make us happier.

I often feel like I woke up and was this age without my knowledge or consent.  I have no idea how I got to this point where I have this house with an 8 year old and a 23 year old relationship.  I picked a course and couldn’t quite figure out how to get to where I wanted to be so I settled into a routine I felt I had control over, taking the safe steps toward what I thought I wanted, trying to control how it would happen.  The more I controlled the less options I had.  And then those decisions became my life.  Truly I’m not complaining about any of it because I am so blessed and fortunate.  It’s just scary how we can live a life without really living it.  I’m working to heal that and bring back the options I had when I was younger.  The truth is they are still there and no, it won’t look exactly how I thought it would.  I don’t have the kids I thought I would, I don’t have the money secured exactly as I thought I would, we no longer have the family business and we have lost people along the way.  But there are still glimmers.  I’ve held so tightly to a vision for so long that I wasted time I could have just done something else and gotten the result sooner but I was so attached to what I saw that I couldn’t let it go.  And now it’s happening to a degree and it feels good, but it also feels like I could have had it a long time ago if people had just played ball.  Like if this is where we were going to end up like I called it, why didn’t we just do it sooner? And overall we are happy. I’m happy.  There are a lot of amazing things happening and even greater things are coming with attention and focus.  So we don’t have to go back to how it used to be—we can create that level of safety and desire to be here and now.  That is how we heal: be here now.  We appreciate the past but we live where we are.

“My own work of art, here where I stand,” Toby Lightman.  This was a song I heard years ago and I loved it then and for whatever reason it recently popped back up for me.  But this simple line is something I needed to hear.  I have made a ton of progress over the last year and I still feel shaky about it, like it can be taken away.  Like I don’t want to fall into old habits and go back to how I was but I feel myself slipping every now and then.  And I have so many goals, so many irons in the fire, with open projects and things that I’ve started that I can’t (and don’t want to) stop that I feel a little all over the place.  I’ve been working really hard on keeping the organization up and ramping it up to a higher level and I’ve been planning more specific details of what I want to do—clarifying and specifying the goals.  And when I see that I feel a little overwhelmed. 

Here’s the thing, I am beyond privileged to be in the position I’m in and I do not take it for granted for a second.  But when we take control of our lives and we suddenly are transitioning to a new way of living, it can be scary as hell.  It’s intimidating and it’s very easy, especially in the beginning stages of the rubber meeting the road, when we get some traction, to fall back into old habits.  It’s a constant test of asking what is it that we really want.  If we are trying to change then we need to match the action to that desired outcome.  I’m lucky that I have the means and energy to make the changes I want to make.  I’ve decided that I am breaking away from the past and I am doing something new, I am creating something new and I am healing the old patterns.  And that in itself is art.  The person I am meant to be is art. 

Even art needs to be refined every now and then and there is nothing wrong with that.  I still have moments of intensely feeling behind the times, like I should have started all of this sooner and that I should be further on my journey.  But I am here now and all I can do is work with what I have.  I allow my brain to live in fear of what I’ve missed and that is where I have to learn to accept that I am where I’m meant to be.  This life is perfectly as it is meant to be.  I had a moment while working on my book where I felt almost existential, I could feel myself going out of my body comparing my life to that of my parents.  I always thought they had it so together and were so much more mature than me, that they knew what they were doing all the time.  I never considered they were my age and probably felt just as insecure and unsure.  And it’s that insecurity that keeps us on the fence.  So, that too, is a pattern I’m breaking—I’m diving in.

Life is a creation and it is a work of art and we are handed all the raw materials to make something of it.  We should never be ashamed of what we make or how we feel or the direction we are called.  We are meant to honor the art we are and the life we make.  We are meant to be proud of our creation.  I held back so many facets of my life because I didn’t want to get too big.  I wanted to be accepted.  And now I have enough understanding that I was always meant to be big and that people felt it, even when I was a kid, that I understood things differently.  I didn’t see the obstacles—if I wanted something I saw the way to do it and I did it.  I’m not saying it always worked out, but I am saying for all those times that didn’t work out, I was the reason.  My brain stopped me, my fear stopped me, my doubt stopped me—I was the biggest obstacle.  Had I unleashed all I was earlier, I would have learned to harness it and direct that power.  That’s true for all of us.  So don’t be afraid to live with our art turned all the way up.  The world needs that now more than ever—live life completely turned up.

You are what you repeat…whether it’s what you think, say, feel, and do.  Believe it or not I saw this on the lid of my breakfast the other day, which, for the record, was a really nice way to start the day.  As we’ve been working through some changes in the house that we unexpectedly had to tackle (now instead of later), coupled with the changes (very unexpected changes) at work that I’ve shared, I feel like we need this reminder that our thoughts determine our reality.  How many thoughts do we repeat day in and day out?  When looking at our current circumstances, what do we see?  Do we see the positive manifestation of what we have done or do we fixate on what isn’t how we want it?  So here’s the thing:  I’ve been begging for changes in both my work and home for a really long time.  These have come about in ways I wouldn’t have chosen myself but the events have still brought the changes that I ultimately asked for.  The universe responds to energy—it doesn’t care about the how, it just responds to the frequency and it brings about the result. 

So when we look at the picture of our life as it is right now, what do we see?  How do we feel about what we see?  And what do we want to see?  There is a saying that what we have around us we thought about years ago.  What we have now is the result of our thoughts we used to think.  Sidenote, I feel like this is why we have a tendency to dismiss the present because we are so used to instant gratification that when we recognize we received something we wanted a long time ago, it has sort of lost its luster because we are no longer in that moment.  Anyway.  It’s like the light of the stars—we aren’t seeing that real time, we are seeing echoes of what used to be.  The universe takes time to catch up with our dreams.  It isn’t a wishing well.  Sometimes we are more tuned in and we are able to bring about our desired results more quickly, but usually we have to give it some time.  The universe doesn’t offer one-click results. 

The point is this: the universe will answer, always and without fail.  The universe responds to our thoughts.  And while the catchy phrase of our youth, “You are what you eat,” still sits with us and we refuse to change our habits, we need to recognize that the same message applies to our lives: we are what we repeat.  Everything in our lives is the result of a thought and an action (or inaction, or half-action).  We get what we give, we receive the energy we put out, and our results are based on the effort we put into something.  When we fixate and focus on something, the universe will pick up on it even if it takes time to deliver—but we are the ones responsible for our lives and what we see around us.  So.  If we aren’t getting the results we want, it’s time to look at our habits and what we are thinking and to make the changes.  We have control and the ultimate say in our results.  Take some time to evaluate.

I am grateful for the reminder that things change all the time and to have examples of what it looks like to accept life with grace.  I am also grateful to have examples of remembering what is important and that we can’t hold onto things thinking they will bring us back to where we want to be.  A woman I work with is in her 60’s and she and her girls have very little attachment to things—like she was able to get rid of ornaments that her children made and her girls didn’t want to hang onto them either.  She was able to give up the home she lived in nearly her entire marriage, the place where she created a family she is so in love with in order to build a new house and start over now.  I so admire that.  She is the example that things aren’t where we hold the memory, things aren’t important.  It is the life we create, is the presence in our life to create those memories and understand what joy is. 

I have been inspired by someone I follow on Instagram, specifically her house once again.  This page calls to me because she is able to do so many of the things I want to do. I am so intrigued with how the family operates and she does so many of the things I want to be doing like baking daily, like gardening, like working out, like home-schooling her kids when needed, like following the bible, like vlogging and spending time with her family, like going out and having fun being active whether it’s being on the beach or wakeboarding or snowboarding.  The parties she throws for her kids are epic, the holidays are beautiful.  Even when they do things differently, it’s still amazing.  Like this Christmas in Hawaii.  I have no idea how they managed to pull off what they did with all of the gifts and the Christmas Eve bag and the time with family.  It was another reminder that it isn’t the home or the place that holds the memory—we do.  We make the memory. 

I spent so much of my life attached to the places and the things thinking that is where my memory is.  That’s why it was always so difficult for me to let go of anything.  It’s why I still have a hard time letting go of certain things.  But I see there is real value in keeping things simple.  When we don’t crowd our space with things, we are better able to navigate through what we need. And I have another reminder today about what it looks like when we are fully supported and cared for by those around us-not just clearing out the physical mess but also the people who aren’t for us.  This is someone I follow on social media who went through a divorce and now she owns a small restaurant and does a podcast and it’s awesome to see how accepting all the pieces of herself has made her stronger and happier.  When she was losing what she built it hurt her, but she kept going and she is the better for it now.  So I’ve taken some time to continue the purge as we are in the thick of winter and I am looking toward Spring.  I’m finally accepting that it’s never too late to embrace change and let go of what doesn’t work, that we don’t need to fill our lives with stuff to feel fulfilled—time with those we love is truly the most important and that will create the way to our goal.  We don’t have to be one thing, we can be all things and we will find someone who supports that in us.  This is a letting go—and it’s all for the better.

“When people feel stuck it’s because they’re only using part of their capacity, part of their brain.  When people are hungry they change their life.  How do you get yourself to take new action?  You need new emotions,” Tony Robbins.  We get stuck when we are in the same routine, doing the same things, with the same stimulus every day.  Doing the same thing over and over again doesn’t allow for us to discover and explore new options for problem solving or new life experiences.  We repeat something like 90% of the same thoughts we had the day before—if we do that enough over time that means we establish some pretty firm grooves in the brain.  The same thing can be said with those emotions—if we allow ourselves to feel the same emotions over and over again and are trained to have certain reactions, we will continually respond the same way to similar circumstances.  When we feel the call/need to do something else, that is when the hunger starts to form.  We feel the potential for something else, an awareness of other possibilities sparks in us.  We start to reframe what we feel about things and we ask ourselves if that is what we really feel or if that is what we trained ourselves to feel.  When we feel differently, that perspective shifts, even if it’s the same circumstance again.  With new perspective, we can take a different approach because we see a new option.

We are meant for greatness.  It’s a simple fact that we have all the potential of the universe inside of us.  It’s also a simple fact that it’s up to us what we do with it.  There is the quip where we ask for a cake and spirit/God/Source gives us all the ingredients to make it, the cake doesn’t just appear.  The same is true with any facet of our lives.  If we get the call to try something new, whether a subtle nudge/reminder or the fabric of what we knew being torn, we need to breathe and acknowledge that we need to do something new, that there are other possibilities for us and perhaps the routine we currently follow isn’t honoring all that potential in us.  No one ever said we have to be great at everything, we just need to be great at being ourselves and if we are going to unlock that full potential, we need to have a bigger perspective.  We need to understand time and how we spend our days.  We need to be highly in tune with who we are so we have constant awareness of what is us versus what is a push from the outside.  We need to unlock the full potential of who we are through that connection to self, source, and then to the world around us.  We can’t be pushed by the world, we are meant to influence the world. 

It’s difficult to create that space in a world that demands constant attention and immediate decisions.  We place urgency on things that require none, and it gives us this sense of FOMO if we don’t respond immediately–so we act on impulse rather than instinct.  Those are two very different things.  An impulse is a reaction, often without thinking, whereas an instinct is a natural response from within.  Impulse seeks a quick fix and may feel like an instinct, but the impulse is fleeting whereas the instinct will always be the same.  For example, we see candy while we’re checking out at the store and we decide we need the sugar fix right then and there versus us seeing the candy and understanding we are tired and hungry and need to eat something we prepared at home.  Same thing as far as the need for food in the moment, but the impulse would have a quick, unhealthy solution whereas the instinct tells us to address the problem correctly, not just find instant gratification.  If we are going to elicit new responses from ourselves, we need to get to the feeling behind our current circumstances and then recognize how we want to feel.  It isn’t enough to want to feel it—we need to know how to embody it and become it.  We are never stuck—we are a little stagnate, and we can start the flow again.  How do you want to feel today? 

Today I am grateful for creating my identity.  I don’t need people around me who don’t want me around.  I’ve learned that lesson and embraced it entirely.  I so desperately wanted to be accepted my entire life—that is a huge premise I’ve shared over and over again in this pieces, on these pages.  But people have shown me who they are more often than not and I will always believe them from this point on.  Forming relationships is tough because the human dynamic is such that most of us still operate on some level of competition, trying to secure what is best for us, feeling like we don’t have enough to go around.  There is also ego.  People want to be the best simply to be the best.  In all of this, all we have, the only person who is with us through absolutely everything is ourselves.  It is critical to know who we are so we don’t lose ourselves in the mess of becoming what someone else thinks we should be.  Even the little things, like buying the art I like, the books I enjoy, the clothes I want to wear, how I want my house to look—all the way to deciding on the thoughtfulness I put into a relationship and recognizing when the relationship isn’t working.  Knowing who I am is critical (as it is for all of us).  I am grateful, as scared as I used to be, to stop thinking about what others think first.  I am grateful to embrace the entirety of who I am.  She’s much more powerful in that capacity versus making herself palatable.  I am me.   

Today I am grateful for understanding the difference between showing and telling.  I understand now that part of why I had so much difficulty explaining and articulating my feelings as a kid is because I was trying to make people feel a certain way—I was trying to make them understand.  Instead of just saying it, just feeling it, I wanted to use words that made them feel how I wanted them to feel.  I thought that was the only way they would understand.  I thought if they understood they wouldn’t want to make others feel that way.  I didn’t understand then that most people don’t operate on such an emotional level all the time.  I didn’t really consider it emotional, I just thought that was how people operated.  I thought everyone felt like I did at some point.  And maybe they do, but the point is they didn’t let those feelings run them.  They didn’t let the feeling make a decision for them and I couldn’t make them feel what I did.  So showing is the way.  No pretext, no preamble—just tell the story.  Just say the words and how the message resonates is out of our hands.  Our job isn’t to make sure people understand how we feel, it’s to attract those who feel how we do through shared experience.    

Today I am grateful for witnessing light.  The light is coming earlier and staying longer in the day.  As I type this the sun is rising.  There is so much life in the light.  It’s an awe inspiring thing to watch the light crawl over the Earth, waking it up. So gentle yet so persistent and powerful—it’s unstoppable.  It runs our lives and guides us where to be and when, how to flow with the seasons, how to flow throughout our day.  We aren’t meant to hide, to shy away from the light.  We are meant to bask in it.  In so many ways I’ve had the light turned on again.  I didn’t realize how much of my time I had spent in the dark.  It felt comfortable there.  There isn’t much reason to move in the dark, so it felt good to settle and curl up wherever I was, perhaps to into another world through a book or the TV.  But that isn’t reality.  I still love those moments, I savor them because there is something special in that too.  I understand on a different level that none of that is actually doing anything.  It’s cool to be inspired and want to have the results or live a life like we see whether on TV or in the books or on social media.  Unless we get out from under the rock, off of the couch, and step out into the light we will never get to do those things.  We have to embrace the gift of the light. 

Today I am grateful for limits.  I’ve been on the struggle bus when it came to getting things done for a while now.  I always relied on a sharp mind to get me from one thing to the next and to remember all I needed to do.  It would automatically get me organized—I mean I used to pride myself on that.  Sometimes the environment around me would get a little chaotic but I would always manage to get myself back where I needed to be.  My brain has felt like absolute mush over the last several months.  I was already stressing with the volume of work I needed to do and I allowed myself to slack in some regards because I wasn’t sure how to tackle some of it.  And then more got piled on so I created the perfect little storm and that turned me to a bunch of ducks going in different directions. I’m grateful, however, because there comes a point where we can’t keep saying yes.  We have to have a limit and we have to abide by it.  Our body and mind know and they give us warning signs—mine did. I wasn’t feeling excited about projects, I was confused, things were conflicting, and I didn’t know where to start—none of that is normal for me on a regular basis.  So I’m grateful for this because we have limits.  We all have that point where we need to say, “It’s enough,” and start tackling one thing at a time.  That’s all we can do anyway.  I used to pride myself on the multi-tasking and managing multiple machines at work while on the phone and indexing records all at the same time—people used to compliment me on it.  Now, I understand I can still do all of that but only in one arena.  I can’t do that in 10.  So.  Back to the drawing board with some limitations and expectations—and it’s ok.  I’m glad to do things well rather than desperately and half-assed.  To do what I need to do.

Today I am grateful for space.  It’s amazing how space and time give us perspective.  In the midst of an event it can be challenging to find the right answer because we are too emotionally invested, too close to the forest so to speak.  With time a lot of things can happen.  We can either calm down and realize it isn’t that big of a deal or we can realize that we don’t align any longer.  Or we realize the middle ground and we understand the compromise or that something wasn’t that important or we understand that changes need to be made.  Space itself lets us know how we really feel.  They say if something still bothers you after 24 hours, speak up within 48.  I think it’s good advice and I honestly it also believe it gives people the most accurate representation of our feelings.  I had an incident this past week where I told someone that I wasn’t happy with their behavior and their response was to tell me that it was essentially my fault—so my understanding that they refuse to take responsibility and have no regard for my side of the event tells me that the space was and is warranted.  I will continue working on my space and my identity and I am ok with that—always know where we stand with people.

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.

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.      

The reason yesterday’s quote hit me was because I’ve been off the last couple of months—holidays, work, all of the craziness.  I’ve enjoyed the holidays and I’ve put on some weight again as I haven’t been working out quite as much and I’ve been eating way too much sugar.  I took time at the beginning of the month and I had put down specific dates and goals and I fell off track with that too.  It’s not an excuse, it is a fact of life that I had to prioritize other tasks for a while.  And a little more truth: I don’t regret it.  There will only be so many more Christmases I have with my family and the family already isn’t whole.  There will only be so many more days that my son asks me to sleep on the couch with him or to cuddle with him in the morning.  There will only be so many more times I can have all those people I had over to be able to tell them I love them and I’m glad they’re here with me.  In addition to these very real realities, it’s no secret that I’ve felt off as well.  At first it was a quiet little trigger kind of telling me that things were a bit imbalanced.  Now it’s becoming a louder demand to refocus the work.  I feel it in me that now is the time to start moving along the track again, to get clear on what the purpose is moving forward and take actions. 

I was feeling a little guilty for the things I haven’t been doing if I’m fully honest, and thinking about all the craziness around me and I happened to be listening to a reading about letting go of control amidst some newly found chaos. Right as I’m thinking about this reading, a post from Loren comes up talking about the day she started to write her book. That was a subtle but firm reminder from the universe that it is time for me to focus on the projects that mean the most to me.  Yesterday I shared what Bishoi said about staying on track while on vacation, and I feel like I’ve been on a long vacation from the work I’ve wanted to do.  I’ve maintained my daily routines, but the big picture has been put on hold. There was a purpose to taking that time to enjoy one of my favorite times of year with my family and to show them all a good time, to brighten their day.  I was able to do it so I did it and I am so proud of what I did.  So I’m not going to beat myself up about it because I still have the drive to meet these goals. What I’m going to do is reprioritize and focus on what needs to be done to reach the place I want to be.  And, as I said yesterday, I’m not going to look at this as a derailing—it was a pause.

There are so many moments I feel more tired than energized.  Getting up early to do this work, working all day, driving home for an hour, cleaning up, making sure I spend time with my family—the clock gets eaten up pretty quickly and I so often find myself asking what happened to the day.  But my plan is to start focusing heavy on what I need to do now so I can spend the next holiday season with even more intention than I did this year.  So I can take some time off in the summer and really enjoy it.  Do the work now to set myself up for something bigger to come.  I can push through the tired working toward a bigger goal.  There are 24 hours in a day and I know I can shift things around to make my bigger plans work. We are allowed to take the time we need to do what we need to do, it’s ok to take some time to prioritize other things—life happens and we aren’t meant to be a machine.  But we get ourselves back on track when we know that’s what we need to do—be accountable to ourselves and our goals and it all comes together.     

“If I reach a milestone that I feel is worthy of time off, then what am I vacationing from?…if I’m going to stay as unbalanced as I am with fitness then I’m going to be just as unbalanced in my time off,” Bishoi Khella.  Khella shares this in the context of taking a week long vacation to Mexico and people asking him how he is going to stay on track with his fitness. His reply was that he is not going to stay on track, he’s going to enjoy his time, not track his food, he will drink, he won’t get up early to workout, and he is going to spend time on the beach.  That is the entire point of vacation—to take a break from the norm and allow the mind and body to recharge by not doing what we normally do.  It’s to see something and do something new.  It’s to feel good trying new things and tasting something different.  We can’t look at the time away from a goal as time wasted or as something that will entirely derail us.  It’s more of a pause.  We only get derailed if we completely stop working.  Otherwise those little pauses are more about routine maintenance than anything.

I work with a team of people who are at different points in their lives.  They are younger than me and they have different life circumstances that allow them different freedoms than I have.  I’m also more established and have different opportunities than they have—I also have a family that relies on me and a 20 year long career that requires care and patience to determine my next step.  Balancing all that is a challenge and they tend to look at the things I’ve listed above as an excuse.  These people have their own challenges, but they solve those problems by never turning off.  I’ve seen that lead directly to burnout—I’ve worked like that for years so I’ve also felt that burnout personally.  There never was a milestone I could reach that allowed me to take a break—I was ALWAYS on.  And then I had to be on when other people were off.  Then I had to be on SO other people could take off.  I have seen the power of a project consume people, the power of a lifestyle take over.  In some cases that’s a good thing because we learn to develop it into something massive.  In other cases we lose ourselves to something that can never yield the return we need and it will always demand more. 

So here is the point: we are all worthy of taking the time we need to recharge.  We are all allowed to take a moment to appreciate where we’ve gotten and what it took to get there.  Taking a break, reaching a point where we acknowledge the need to take some time to ourselves away from all of the craziness we endure on a daily basis doesn’t make us weak and it doesn’t mean we are giving up.  It means we are human and need some time.  Sometimes the only way to stay balanced is to allow ourselves to get a little imbalanced.  Allow the brain to work through the proprioception of our location and establish a new equilibrium so we remember that we aren’t machines.  Take the time to be human in the pursuit of our goals.  We need to make sure that progress is measurable but we don’t need to fixate.  We need to know the point when we have to stop and take a break.  This isn’t a limit, it’s about maintenance as I said earlier.  We give ourselves the time we need to recharge and then we get back at it with new energy, new dedication, and a new perspective.  So get in touch with what we need and honor those things that may require us to take a pause but ultimately help us get back on track.        

We recently found out that the president of my 9-5 is leaving.  I couldn’t have anticipated the emotional reaction I had.  At first I was just in shock and a little angry because we’ve been through hell these last few years dealing with this merger immediately after the nightmare of COVID—and it was like you’re choosing to leave now?  Why?  After all that, now you pick up and go?  It really did feel like this utter sense of abandonment and hopelessness mixed with the shock of it.  Of course rumors started immediately; was he asked to leave?  Did he not get along with the new leadership in place?  They replaced him with an employee from the organization that bought us out so was this him stepping down because of “infiltration” so to speak?  We all know there were reasons and he was kind enough to share some of them with us—but I feel there is more to the story, as grateful as I am that he did take the time to share. 

What I didn’t expect was that behind that anger was actually sadness.  I’ve had a tumultuous relationship with this organization in my tenure there.  20 years is a long time to spend with anyone and It’s completely natural to have some ups and downs.  Some were down more than others.  But it has never been lost on me that this place also kept a roof over my head, clothes on my back, food in my stomach, and allowed me to go through school twice—for my bachelors and then for my LMT.  I was born there.  My son was born there.  My grandparents died there.  I walked away from that place once and it took me back at a time I legitimately needed it to—a new baby and a contract ending, I needed work and it was there.  Plus I actually like this president—he’s a good person and he took time to meet with everyone.  I’ve sat in his office with proposals for my department, I joked with him, I listened to his speeches and believed him. 

There is also sadness that this place that was independent for so long has lost its identity over the last few years because of this merger, and our president leaving speaks volumes to the fact that we no longer are who we were.  He was the last link to what we formerly knew and I know in my gut that part of the reason he is leaving is that this merger didn’t go how he felt it would.  Regardless of all that, I didn’t expect to shed tears over this.  As he stood crying telling us his reasons for leaving, I understood.  And I felt sad too.  Like him, this place is really all I’ve known.  I’ve worked there nearly my entire adult life, same as him.  He had the calling to do something different and to take a more creative opportunity and he said he wants to write a new chapter in his book—and I asked how we know when it’s time to move on and write that new chapter.  But I think I get it now: we just know.  When we see what we’ve wanted and that we can’t get it where we’re at and our goals are stagnate, we know it’s time to turn the page and start over again—or at least add to the book.

So, feelings are complicated, truly.  I’ve worked myself silly for that place and lost out on a lot because of it.  I’ve settled for things because of that place because, while I’m comfortable, I am well aware they got a deal with me because I didn’t understand my worth.  But I KNOW that place and I know who I am when I’m there even if that is a part of me I’m trying to change.  The funny thing is when change is thrust upon us we get disoriented and struggle to adjust—even if it’s a change we were looking to make.  When we change on our own it’s usually a gradual thing.  I take it as a good sign that the changes I’ve been working on were already in the works and I’m a firm believer that sometimes we have to take the leap before we are ready, it’s still a struggle when we have to dive in before we are ready.  And I’ve been writing my book for so long that I lost sight of when it was time to start a new chapter—it’s been one long run on story forever.  Thanks to this change in part of my identity, I too understand it’s time to write a new chapter.  It’s time to do something new.