Dude, Where’s My Life?

At the end of 2008 I decided to take a break from a manic life and downsize my life. I was exhausted, had bags under my eyes that could house a small family and I felt that no matter how much I slept, I would never feel anything but bone-deep weariness. I was working endlessly, and feeling constantly frustrated with it. My home life was no more satisfying: constantly on the edge of being homeless, short of money and that sad, lonely person you see sitting in a coffee shop, pretending that they wanted to be alone for a bit of ‘me time’ … was me. I’d lost track of the meaning in my life and all I was doing was helping greedy corporations make more money. Things had to change.

I gave up my job and moved a couple of hundred miles to the depths of Somerset. I decided to take a step back and take a simple job that didn’t require me to stay late and engage in business bureaucracy. Something that would be simple and give me a chance to get my life back  and concentrate on me. So that’s what I did.

This last year has taught me a lot. I discovered myself, and it’s not the same as my old self. I’m fiercer, I’m softer,  I cry more, I smile more, I’ve remembered who I am when I’m not pushed to breaking point. I actually meditate. I’m not afraid to voice my REAL thoughts (and not just the ones that people of my age are SUPPOSED to have). I’m not so afraid that people will think of me as quirky – I’m creative: quirky is what we do best. I’m slower to anger, even if my temper is as explosive when I get there as it always was, but the most important thing I learnt in this last year is that my life NEEDS to have meaning, and it has to be TRUE to myself.

I’ve done all manner of different jobs. I’ve been a stablehand, a barmaid, a waitress, an account manager, an editor, a designer and a bookseller and more besides. I’ve never minded putting in the hours or putting whatever I had into it, no matter how lowly or important the job was. It doesn’t matter as long as you not only enjoy it but you GAIN something from it. It has to MEAN something to you.

It’s got me wondering about my next steps in life. I’ve built my home. I’ve made some friends and I’m making more. I have people in my life who like and respect me for who I AM and yet there’s something missing … and I don’t know how to find it. What I’m doing is a decent job. It’s fairly respectable. I can even find enjoyment in it but it’s not THE ONE.

So, how do people find it? This elusive career that makes them happy and satisfied? I’m 30 and I’ve never found it. I’ve had a couple of wild ideas that nearly took off, and as I gave them careful thought and consideration I realised I could make them succeed but they wouldn’t be enough to fulfil me and leave me happy. I don’t have IT, the vision of what it is that I want. I have a list as long as both of my arms and legs of what I DON’T want, but it’s not getting me any closer to what it is I DO want.

I don’t want to answer to someone else’s rules. I don’t want to compromise my life and my happiness for THE JOB. I don’t want to wear a suit and say things like ‘pushing the envelope’. I don’t want to spend my days promoting something I don’t believe in. I’m fed up of saying ‘I don’t care’ to mask the fact that I care FAR too much.

I want something big, something bright, something bold. I want it to affect people profoundly, I want to MEAN something to the people I work with. I want to inspire, I want to BE inspired. I want it to MAKE MY HEART SING! I want to educate. I want what I do to have so many different elements, I will never be bored. I want it to be spiritual, I want it to be practical. I want to be flexible and dependable. I want it to REFLECT me. I want to live with INTEGRITY.  I want to do something that will make me look back on my life and think that what I did MATTERED.

Career development consultants and recruiters couldn’t give a damn about those things, the ones that really DO matter, so where do I turn? What’s my next step?

For that matter, what’s yours?

Tags: Peter Pan Syndrome aka When I grow Up, What Am I Going To Do With My Life

Shifting Sands

I woke up today and decided my attitude needed a shift.

I had a rough few weeks a couple of weeks ago, and I’ve been feeling a little sorry for myself on and off ever since. Self-pity just isn’t my bag. Like flourescent yellow, it just doesn’t suit me. Some things I wanted didn’t turn out how I hoped and because I really DID want them, I grumped about it. ‘I want’ piled on top of ‘I want’ and the wants got drowned in the ‘you can’t always have what you wants’. Life became an emotional laundry hamper, and I was all set for a turn through the wringer… until I woke up.

The wake up call was a couple of friends who were going through respective tough times, and it made me realise that whatever was going on in my life, I only had to look back a couple of years to see how far things had come for me. Financially, emotionally, spiritually. It had all changed, and for the better. Myself of three years ago was a shadow of who I am now, and an even fainter imprint of the me I will be in a couple more years.

I’ve regained much of the strength I had and lost. The strength that is perhaps still missing has been patched with courage, and perhaps holds stronger as a result. I once again have faith, and hope. I have belief, in MYSELF where once I had none and my patience and tolerance grow incrementally every day. Slowly I am finding my voice. Sometimes it’s more raucous and louder than I mean it to be, and sometimes when inside my head is screaming for a witty riposte, my voice is less than the quietest whisper, but somewhere in the Universe I’m finding my place.

There was a time in my life, where I was the eccentric one. I wandered about with flowers in my hair and cameras in my hands and little else seemed to matter. I turned up to parties in bare feet. I wandered streets at night because they were different then and I needed to SEE. But my inner and outer selves didn’t mesh. I was a walking example of Cartier Bresson when he called artists liars by omission. My life was a lie of omission because what I was on the inside wasn’t what sat on the outside. My exterior was creative, interesting and eccentric but it didn’t begin to express the complexities that sat under the surface, waiting for a voice.

For a period, at my lowest ebb, I denied those complexities not only their voice but their existence. I was told that I couldn’t be that person and for a while I tried to forget that person I’d been and those things I’d felt and known so deeply that they were a part of me. But I couldn’t always deny them and sooner or later they would surface again and needle at me until one day early on last year, I made a conscious choice to express the elements of me that had lain so far under the surface, and to have faith in myself and my direction in life. I’m now a qualified Reiki Practitioner and I practice all the time. I’ve never had so much fun and being able to express myself in a new way is a constant surprise and delight to me. I speak about experiences and emotions I would never have touched on before. I’m not afraid to try things that are a little unusual.

My current profession, with all it’s irritations and frustrations has also been an eye opening experience for me. It has opened me to people who believe all sorts of things with varying degrees of vehemence and cynicism. It has given me time and space to realise that my own perceptions are not so far removed from reality as I feared and I have learnt to speak of them in a way that is approachable and balanced. Slowly as a child building a vocabulary for the first time, I am building my own vocabulary and learning to speak without fear of mockery but with confidence, assurance and faith in myself.

Last week, I was looking at my life and wondering why things never seemed to go my way, but when I look back and see how far I’ve come, I have to admit that my life is pretty damned amazing right now. No, it’s not perfect. I don’t have much money and I’d rather be working for myself doing something jaw-dropping but all in all it’s good. It’s somewhere I can be happy and something I can build from to make my dreams, gigantic as they are, a reality. There is magic in the air and beginnings sit like a fizzing taste on my tongue. I wonder what this year will really bring?

Tags: Emotion Is A Rollercoaster That's Jumped off The Tracks, What Am I Going To Do With My Life

When I grow up, I want to rule the world…

I can’t really deny bring a grown-up for much longer, despite my enduring fantasy that I am four years old and have been for the last 26 years. The evidence is beginning to mount up. The stripes of grey hair winging their way out from my temples, the lines fanning out from my eyes when I smile, the fact that I don’t bounce as much when I fall over (although it doesn’t seem to stop me falling!) and irrefutable fact that I haven’t climbed a tree in five years. Not to mention my last birthday (no really, don’t mention it!)

When I was a kid, I could not wait to grow up: All that freedom, all that space to grow into, to travel through, to make a mark on. The world would be mine for the taking.

The little village where I spent my youth with its small minded inhabitants and endless gossip wouldn’t hold me. The villagers weren’t big enough. They didn’t see big, think big, feel big. They weren’t like me. We were different sides of a line that none of us knew how to cross.

When I grew up, I was going to be free. I wouldn’t be the sort of woman to be held back by a partner’s ambition or to be used for another’s gain. I wouldn’t be stereotyped, pigeonholed or belittled by people who were smaller, petty and jealous. None of that shit would touch me. There would be nothing that would hold my dreams in check. I was bursting to be unleashed on the world and shine like no-one ever had before. I was going to shine, I was going to love and living was going to be my art form.

We passed from year to year, being faced with choices that defined and limited our paths: Which GCSE? Which A-level? Which University? I fought against the restriction. I wanted something bigger, something broader: A single focus was too narrow and I fought against it like a caged animal.

I didn’t fit a model of success. I didn’t have a particular aim, a particular ambition, a single direction. I dipped a toe in every puddle, retraced my steps, fell down and got back up again only to discover that what I had was endless possibilities and a depth of feeling I didn’t know what to do with.

I wrote. I photographed. I read voraciously. I walked outside the lines. Until I realised that what I was searching for couldn’t be satisfied with separate, compartmentalised things: a job, a career, a hobby, religion. No. It was too bold, too wild, too yearning.

My direction had to tie together the thoughts and emotions that lay deep within me. I had to find a way of making what was inside me a physical reality, with all the challenges that demands. My direction is spiritual, emotional and physical. It’s multi-faceted, sparkling, impossible to define and MINE.

I don’t know how I’m going to find it, how I’m going to make it or where the hell it’s going to take me. It’s going to be a wild journey, with some money, some  poverty, some love and some loneliness but I know that wherever I end up, I’ll be looking at the stars and thinking that my wild adventure begins and ends with me. My happiness and my destination doesn’t rely on promotions or shiny shoes, whether I travel first class or stuffed in a cargo plane with a herd of llamas but it relies wholeheartedly on my perceptions and my willingness to take whatever life throws at me and make something bloody awesome out of it.

In my world, now that I’m grown up, I know that nobody has it better than I do. There is not one single person I’m jealous of … because those other people, they’re off doing their thing and I’m doing mine … and no matter how small my steps, every single one I take is taking me that much closer to that incredible destination I dreamed of when I was a kid and the journey’s a patchwork kaleidescope of wonderful things and desperate disappointments that make up a wonderful life.

Tags: Peter Pan Syndrome aka When I grow Up, What Am I Going To Do With My Life