Let Your Life Speak

Last week I joined the ranks of the unemployed. Not exactly by choice.... I received word Wednesday afternoon that my position as the marketer at Baird & Warner Real Estate was terminated due to the need to cut costs in their budget. Thursday was my last day. I've watched, for several months, the administrative staff dwindle and wondered each time I was called into the office if this would indeed be my time to pack my bags and hit the road. So by the time my boss told me the news it was by no means a surprise.

What IS a surprise is that I am noticing this little interesting feeling of ....relief. I almost feel ashamed. Maybe because after so many months of waiting for the ax to fall and dreading it, the relief might be from knowing that it has actually fallen and so far nobody died.

Or maybe it's because there have been times since my divorce that I have begun something different in terms of making money but I always had to question whether or not it would fit in with my schedule at Baird & Warner. My job wasn't a great paying job but it was creative, and I loved it, it was safe, I could physically do it, until recently it paid the bills. I got by! But now, I'm not tethered by any schedule. I'm not burdened with the energy of concern that I'm going to loose a safety net. The worst has already happened.... That energy is freed up and I am playing with ideas. I'm hearing a voice that says "now I have a chance."

I recently went to visit my daughter for a couple of hours. We were talking about this and she lent me a book called "Let Your Life Speak. Listening for the Voice of Vocation" by Parker J. Palmer. I knew that I would love this book as soon as I read "(In) moments it is clear - if I have eyes to see - that the life I am living is not the same as the life that wants to live in me. In those moments I sometimes catch a glimpse of my true life, ... and I wonder: What am I meant to do? Who am I meant to be? .... Before you tell your life what you intend to do with it, listen for what it intends to do with you." Oooooooo..... shivers!!!

So, I am trying to make sure that I "listen." Maybe I will ultimately end up doing something all together different. I don't know. I've never been a 9-5 kinda person. The companies I've worked for have been one way or another "flexible." It will be interesting to see what happens. I've always been wonderful at marketing other people. Maybe now I will be marketing ME.

What a scary thought!

I'm not sure what I will find

"But if we are willing to walk quietly into the woods and sit quietly for an hour or two at the base of a tree, the creature we are waiting for may well emerge, and out of the corner of an eye we will catch a glimpse of the precious wildness we seek."