Forward Motion

In physics, a moving object influenced by gravity will eventually come to rest and stop moving.  That is, unless it is energized by an outside force: wind blowing leaves, currents moving buoys, children rolling balls.  So, too, can life come to rest and stop moving. When we’re young, we talk with our friends about what we’d like to do after we’re finished with school, or the direction we would like to see our lives go, where we might live, what our love life might look like, and so forth.  And those dreams fuel our choices. That is, until we find ourselves in a position where we are fairly comfortable, life is good, if not the perfect picture we had envisioned in the past. We begin to maintain, come to rest, and while we may not stop participating in the daily life of our family, community, or work, a quiet stasis begins to be the biggest influence on the decisions we make in our lives. And our lives stop growing, progressing, and we stop learning, and challenging ourselves to reach higher, to do better, to improve. Unless that life is energized from outside. Change is one of those forces that can energize a life, as is necessity. Faced with new prospects, new jobs, having a child, moving to a new city, all of a sudden life is energized and we begin to make decisions, once more, that are focused on moving forward, improving.

Finding the Better Way: An Outsider’s View is that energizing force for me.  Having reached an age where I felt comfortable with what life was giving me, I began to maintain—unconsciously—the sources of that life: of the job, of the social contacts it gave me, of relationship with friends, life at home and in society. And I somehow stopped learning new things, and stopped doing things that were so important to me at one time, like writing. And then the job was gone; restructuring in my company left me searching for a job.  And, in maintenance mind-set, I tried to reproduce that job at another company, but it turned into a bad version of what I had been doing, leaving me a bit jaded at the industry as a whole. And I still wasn’t writing. Until things finally got so bad, I decided it was time to stop pursuing this career that I really didn’t want, and to simply do something that would produce an income to keep me afloat while I began to write again. And things began to happen…. I reached out to a friend I’d worked with previously and asked about open positions. She put me in touch with the recruiter, and I had an interview. And another. A third, and a fourth…and, yes, a job offer. A big cut in pay, but with the most amazing, supporting group of co-workers I’d ever worked with anywhere. Ever. And I began to write again. And to dust off the novel I’d abandoned so many years ago. And to create Finding the Better Way, a home for those looking for inspiration, stories of success and failure—and realizing that failure is just learning one more thing that didn’t work—that may help each of us decide to push ourselves a bit harder today, to make the time to practice the piano again, to sing songs that make us feel alive, and to begin living the life we’d always dreamed of way back when. And it’s a little scary, dealing with computer technology I don’t know—perfectionist tendencies—putting my writing out there and hoping it resonates with like-minded people, and beginning to push myself to make the world a better place than I found it, and creating a community of people determined to do the same in their lives. So, welcome aboard, and let the journey begin…