What Will Transpire?

For the first time in 36 years I don’t have a job or role, goals and metrics, boxes to check, and to-do lists to complete by which to measure my worth, my value, to prove I am a good and responsible person.

It’s not that I actually miss working, especially in the way I used to work, relentlessly pushing myself and constantly trying to stay ahead of things. That was exhausting, and, I am beginning to see, largely unnecessary. But it made me feel like I was living the way I was “supposed“ to, going above and beyond, juggling and reprioritizing moment to moment, meeting by meeting, pushing and trying to keep my world turning. I didn’t identify with my work or my job necessarily, but being a hard worker has been part of my identity for most of my life.

I realized today that I’m in the scribbly, sketchy, rough draft stage of what might be my next chapter. I’m lifting myself up after years of pushing and performing ending in a hard fall. I’m finding that, while I’m not broken, I need to learn to slow down and do things differently. It’s like rehabbing after an injury and understanding that I just can’t do things that way anymore without continuing to hurt myself. I have my pencil and a blank page in front of me but no deadline or external input to shape the output.

Let’s see what comes up…