There is a large family friendly park near my home that I've always enjoyed coming to. There are several baseball and football fields. A 1/4 mile track, a huge picknick/party area and the whole thing is wrapped by a 2 mile long bike/walking path.
It's one of the best places to come and switch off for an hour or two if you are so inclined.
And switching off is exactly what I need right now. Between the demands of my business and the demands of my newly awakened heart I can see how some people simply shut down and refuse to move when times get tough.
I haven't spent much time lately diving into my own head. In fact I've been purposely avoiding thinking about things at all. It's considerably less stressful to concentrate on repairing computer systems or mindlessly fixing broken things around the house than it is to get clear on what I want.
The only thing is, all of those things serve as a diversion at best.
I can only bury myself in computers for so long before my mind wanders back to the real deal - building a life that means something to me.
I wonder though, just what does 'mean something to me' even mean? Life is designed to be lived one day at a time. You can plan ahead for some things. Other things happen when they happen. A lot of life is up to the whims of fate and the universe. You can't control when you will die. You can't control the people around you. About the only thing that you have any control over is your own mind.
So, given that some portions of life are uncontrollable, where does that leave me?
I am building a business. That idea grew out of both a want and a need. I wanted to do my own thing and still make money. I needed to find ways to support myself and my family. So to the extent that it was my own idea that's a part of building a life that has meaning to me.
But at the same time I am at the whims of my clients. If they don't have work for me at that particular time I have to develop more ways to create income. I am forced to think in ways that wouldn't have occured to me as an employee. This is both good and bad.
It's good because the new way of thinking implies growth. Internal growth as a business owner/entrepreneur and a new level of maturity. I am not the same person I was when I started all of this two years ago. The idea of taking 'any old job' to pay the bills is now painful to me. I work harder to win the respect of my clients and I don't look back as much as I used to thinking about how easy it would be to just take a pay check to do the bare minimum. At the end of the day I have to live with how I feel about myself and its not worth selling out.
It's bad because I never really reach a consensus on the best way to do things. I discover and discard methods almost hourly. It's sometimes very frustrating because I can't just slip back into the mold of an employee - following someone elses procedures, even if I don't believe in them. I am left to my own devices to figure things out and if you've never had to do this let me tell you it can be very lonely and frightening. I can't use mentors every single time I need to make a decision. Life and business just don't work that way. You either learn to trust yourself or your essentially screwed.
And that's just the business portion of my day. I also am dealing with changes in my heart and mind about the life I've chosen.
I sometimes wonder if all people choose a life based on the things they are taught as a child. If you are told family is the most important thing, do you immediately start a family when you are old enough? If you are told that playing the field is the only way to be happy do you turn into a giggolo? If you are abused as a child, do you then turn around to abuse your children?
How many of us completely ignore our early training and strike out on our own? How many of us can simply ignore or overcome all of the bad or cruel things that happen just by strength of will? I'd love to meet the person who can just shake off everything and plunge ahead without dealing with any repercussions. What an incredible human being they must be.
The rest of us mere mortals must deal with life moment to moment. How would it feel to be able to trust intuition and feelings? How good would it feel to make a decision without later questioning if it was truly your idea or something that someone else put in your head.
Introspection in the park. Seems like that's exactly what I was trying to avoid, but like I said, the brain works in mysterious ways and no matter how much you might fight or try to ignore it, if there's a problem that needs solving you will come back to it until you either solve it or die.
Since I don't feel any incipient threats to mortality, I'd better get busy...
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