Photo:Vijay-Churasiya/Pixabay
Things happen in our lives we have no idea how to handle. Things we didn’t expect, things we know but never expected to happen to us. Things that happen to others, but not to us…until they do.
And each time they DO happen to us, there’s a disbelief that stops us from dealing with it in the best way for us.
There’s a period of believing that the course of events will reverse and put us back where we were.
The questions flew quickly: who am I now? who was I? Who will I become? Do I have any tie to this company and these people? Can I recreate what I had elsewhere? (NO) How do I move forward (not well or constructively)
Each step takes us further and further from where we were and each attempt to recreate the ‘happiness’ we felt there allows us to look back at a flawed system without seeing the red flags.
I was allowed to live the life of a writer, with the quiet, the solitude, but without writing and doing the work. One day that would change.
It changed last week. And each day a kernel for a new story is born.
The work is the ONLY. It is the crux and the flag to which I must cling. At difficult times we try to go back in time and use the lessons we’ve learned. But…sometimes they just don’t translate to where we are now. Yet, we attempt to use what we know to keep moving, knowing the situation is different, yet hoping for a different outcome.
In the Wilderness, so much seems lost and gone forever, and hope starts to die with each passing day.
And many of the others have elected NOT to help, to respond, to even acknowledge what is being tried and is still in the early stages. And,yes-it’s hard to keep going, but that we must.
Living in a fantasy sounds great, until you actually attempt to do so. Things begin to fall flat when the real world tears its unwelcome head, though. Bills?!? Really. Not playing that game! What do you mean I didn’t make quarterly goal? My shop looks GREAT!!!
One of the first thoughts I had was that I needed to get rid of—cull!—my wardrobe of the RL canter selection. And I got ride of things I’d bought that were impulse buys and I really didn’t wear much. There was far more than I realized! And that when my Amex bills went up in a trice.
And then I came to my senses and realized rejecting something I did love would only hurt me—and no one else—and I would quickly regret my actions.
Things change when things change. I was changing nothing in my work life, going after increasingly lucrative jobs that enabled me to pay back what I owed, but never change what I was doing. Okay. So how do I do that? I start writing. I start with an outline and I write every day. On the train, using that 4 hours 5 days a week to craft what I write. And things will begin to change in my desired direction AND allow me to pay off my debt and continue to find new ways to write.
I was afraid. Of losing the identity I’d created, of not being able to continue buying my image, especially now that no discount was possible for that. I looked for something to take its place, but came up empty handed, really.
Write about the pain and what you went through then , as well as the anticipated pain.
So I accepted where I found myself and started to my my life as great as possible. Only problem? I didn’t know how. This would be the door to a lot of uncomfortable circumstances I would need to fix as well, and not easily.
One of the first things to realize—to KNOW—is that being laid off and being fired is measured in degrees of discomfort.; one does, indeed, hurt less than the other. But not much…
Had I not been laid off, I would have continued doing the same exact thing, day after day, bored but looking fab and spending money on the stuff I don’t need. It provided a level of money and ability to acquire what I needed to continue the fantasy of not doing yet pretending I was growing.
And the layoff turned out to be the level up. Things didn’t work as I kept trying to recreate what had been. What had been though was a very specific situation that could not be recreated. But I kept ignoring those signs while trying to force the situation. To no avail.
When I turned my attention to writing my blog posts, I began to feel like I was accomplishing something worthwhile. It would be a while moving through that minefield of learning; of finding my voice.
There is a funny feeling we get when we get an inkling into a future event. Anticipation for certain, but a strange tickling.