enroute365

Prying my fingers from possibilities

Have you ever found yourself trying to take more than one path at a time? Maybe you've discovered that you don't get very far when trying to straddle several diverging routes. When writing my last post, The Nature of Life, I knew that I was not making any inroads through recent efforts to simultaneously direct and follow my life -- or, at least, my career. But upon reading your responses, I realized that my challenge was a bit more complicated.

Let me explain. I've come to realize that running my own consulting business on a full-time basis will never meet the goal I'd hoped for: being able to utilize my writing and/or design skill sets to their highest potential. Not when I must also function as the sales person, accountant and IT staff! So, it was time to re-evaluate. Still, I love being the strategist and the worker bee ... and having my own company allows me to test new ideas, something I wouldn't risk in a corporate setting. As a result, I continue to run my small enterprise with the intent of relegating it to a side business or "hobby job," after I find a full-time job that better fits my objectives.

Now, the U.S. economy isn't exactly cooperating with my plan! So, to temporarily supplement my income, I've accepted a temp job assignment. I was over-qualified for the job, but the position appeared just when I needed it. No other doors where opening at the time and, when I walked in for an interview, everyone and everything seemed so familiar, so ... right. "Maybe I'm being lead here," I told myself as I checked my ego at the door. Besides, my new contractor was so incredibly happy to snag me that my sense of self-confidence is still beaming somewhere over on Cloud 9!

As I undertake this job, however, I'm also trying to fill the gaps within my resume by educating myself and taking on specific non-paying projects that will enhance my portfolio. Because a new job or my own business might demand that I understand the new social media, I continue to immerse myself in that exploration, too. And, did I mention that I still envision myself as a freelance writer? So those efforts remain on my plate as well!

But, today as I responded to a recent comment, I realized that all these activities were not the result of a decision on my part ... but from a lack of one. I found myself trying to be a business owner, contract employee, job seeker, student and freelance writer ... all because I'd sure hate to miss out on any opportunity before me! I wasn't making choices, I was hedging my bets! And I've had to admit that I'm so afraid of not fulfilling my purpose or potential here on earth (or even fully comprehending what that is) that I' haven't let go of any path showing promise! And when anyone is so frantically jumping from one road to another, can s/he really be quiet enough to hear that still, small voice? Or proactive enough to intentionally forge a well-conceived future?

While last week I questioned when I should listen and when I should lead, now I'm facing the reality that doing either requires letting go: relinquishing my grip on a fistful of possibilities in order to effectively pursue one. Or two. At most, three. (I think you see my dilemma!)

Just try to pry my fingers off any one of my endeavors and I'm sure to give you a litany of reasons why I must retain it. Yet I'll also tell you, in all sincerity, that I am not a workaholic. Although, now that I think of it, I haven't taken a vacation in over two years.

My salvation lies, I believe, in the fact that I'm not very tolerant of indecision ... in myself or others. So now that I've realized I'm guilty of just this crime, correcting my course -- or, more accurately, settling on a single course of action -- should be easier.

I know I should be grateful. After all, I have a wealth of options to choose from. Many women don't have it this good. On second thought, some men don't either. I am facing the type of abundance that comes from having freedom. And freedom requires that decisions be made. I must choose which path to take at this point in my journey or remain stalled at the intersection. Maybe some of my options will reappear in the future. And that's what I'll remind myself: no true possibilities are ever lost because I am always free to retrace my steps and choose again.

How do you address decision-making? What choices are easy for you? Which are difficult?

The nature of life

Does life unfold for those who are open to embrace what it has to offer? Or should it be up to us take life "by the horns" and steer it in the direction of our dreams?

Is life a stream that takes us to our destinations as it will ... or is it the clay that we shape as we will?

I confess that I don't have the answer, although I suspect it lies somewhere between these two extremes. I just have to find where exactly that is for my own journey. These are the answers I still await as I continue to observe a period of stillness and listening.

I do agree with a recent post at A Day to Share with Tammy, that in many ways I create my life each day, even in the simplest efforts, as she describes:

During the summer months, when flowers are plentiful in my garden, I love to fill the house with these heavenly tokens. I arrange bouquets for my living room, bedroom, dining room, kitchen, and my desk. I know I am arranging them for me. With these flowers I am in good company ...

I may have stress and some complications, but in my heart I know that I can and will smile to myself knowing that I am in charge ... I create the roads that I will follow ...

Why be miserable when you can be happy? I looked at the flower on the table again. I saw a gift the flower was giving me.

But, when it comes to issues of personal achievement, I have on occasion been better served by letting my ambition take the day off! Some days God, fate or coincidence seemingly has other plans. And, from time-to-time, these plans have opened doors I could not have foreseen.

What about you? Do you accept life as it comes, mold it to suit, or adopt a different approach. Let me know! I'm still listening.

The strength beyond the scars

A tension headache sets in as my eyes adjust to glasses with new, stronger lenses. An aspirin will soon relieve my pain. I wish I could offer the same relief to my ophthalmologist. I am his pain. I present an ongoing challenge to this man; I have myopia and astigmatism, combined with a need for bifocals and complicated by the fact that the visual acuity of my right eye is twice that of the left. So, I am a problematic patient. Yet it he takes it all in good stride, because it is a miracle that my right eye affords me any vision at all.

At six years old, I was riding my tricycle in the family drive-way as my younger brother played cowboy nearby. What I didn’t realize in time was that the lasso he wielded was a small, hooked chain that my father used to latch the car trunk down on oversized loads. I still hadn’t quite figured it out as the metal tore at my face.

There was no waiting at the doctor’s office … as if they could have held Dad back as he pulled me forward in a barely controlled panic. But I was fortunate. Perhaps the luckiest little girl ever, the doctor told me. While the metal hook had sliced through my retina, it had stopped just short of the pupil. Barring any infection, my vision would be spared.

The doctor was right. After weeks of healing under a mountain of bandages, my eye was as good as new … or better.

As the years have gone by with my myopia gradually increasing, my injured eye has fared better than the one which was spared. What was wounded became stronger, superior. My optometrist marvels at this each year when I visit. He remains in awe of the power of healing that, not only allows me to see, but which now allows me to see more clearly than through the unscathed eye.

I don’t take this blessing for granted … or its lesson. Through it I’ve learned that wherever there is injury, there also exists a capacity for healing and something greater. And if this is true for the flesh, I’ve reasoned, why not for the wounds to the spirit as well?

If I could erase that drive-way accident from my life -- the blood, the fear and panic -- I would not. It is mine and I would not disown it or any other day from my life, even those which brought pain. I am who I am as the sum of these days. And where I was wounded, I am now stronger.

What events in your life have made you stronger?

Finding my personal power

I’ve been neglecting this blog for the last week ... a fact that brings me to another lesson on my journey of self-discovery: I can’t do it all. Like most of you, I juggle demands of work and home ... and something had to give.

I do have my limits. I can admit that to myself. I don’t, however, want to hear these words uttered aloud. Not even from well-intentioned friends. I cannot have someone else’s barriers capping my potential.

Maybe this resistance is to be expected from one who grew up in an ultra-conservative family during the  60s and 70s. It was an environment with few expectations of the female gender, but countless restrictions. Oh, those rules! I was to act like a little lady at all times (and my long-suffering mother really put her time in on this one to no avail); I was to be cheerful just as often (but not boisterously happy as I was wont to be); and I was to be neat and tidy (for which I was truly a lost cause)!

As a young girl, I didn’t dream of being a fire-fighter. It wasn’t an option. I’m not sure that I had any dreams at all.

I understood my place. And, then again, I didn't understand. Not by a long shot.

The age of eight found me feverishly building a bigger leaf pile than that of my friend Ronald, next door. His brother, Eddie, had offered me help which I emphatically refused. I didn't need any help. I could do it myself! My mother, overhearing my refusal, called me inside. I cannot remember her exact words, although her admonishment had something to do with women being the weaker vessel (as ordained by God). It was, she explained, important for men to be stronger; I needed to let Eddie be the stronger one.

Eddie wasn’t a man, I pointed out. Eddie was a boy and he would only get in my way.

That didn’t matter, Mother countered.

I thought about her words for a moment. And then it hit me: why would God want me to be anything less than how he had created me? Why should I be less than what I was?

Mother sent me to my room to think about it some more. But, by then, my mind was on to other questions. Could I, for instance, clean all the toys off of my bed with one quick yank of the bedspread? In one noisy maneuver I found that I could.

Still, a certain resistance to external limitations had snuck into the behavior center in my brain.

It has been only in the last decade that I have consciously realized how much those early restrictions left me with a point to prove. How I’ve refused to accept help ... to say “No!” ... out of a rebellion that helped me retain my very will when I was younger, but now served no useful purpose.

That point of awareness came during team-building training I attended with co-workers three years ago. In a session on personal motivation, I was asked to describe my perfect Saturday morning. I was happy to oblige: I’d start by wolfing down toast and fruit, then spend 15 minutes in meditation, another half an hour practicing T'ai Chi, an hour working in my yard, an hour with a good book, then take a brisk walk in my neighborhood before making a picnic lunch and heading, with my spouse, to a nearby lake. Ahh! Heaven! But I had no sooner completed my idyllic description than a peer (and friend) laughingly retorted, “Yeah, that sounds like you! Brenda let’s-do-10-impossible-things-before-breakfast Friedrich!”

I was hurt. The memory still hurts. To her, I was a Don Quixote tilting at windmills. Perhaps worse than a know-it-all, I was a do-it-all ... or die trying.

My outward response to Janet's outburst was indignation. "If I can do it, it's not impossible," I muttered. Yet she had made her point. And it was a point I needed to hear. Maybe my power was wasted by taking on every task imaginable; I've already proven to myself that I'm quite capable. Maybe my real personal power will be found by setting limitations, by saying, "No!" on occasion and accepting help. I need to move past the defiant third-grader that I was in order to become the discerning forty-something that I have become.

Last week this became clear as I struggled to respond to new challenges facing my business. My writing will have to take a back seat as I choose to not do it all. Efforts here will no doubt be sporadic for some time. But my strength and future success depends on admitting my limitations ... and being able to focus accordingly. It's one of the lessons from my life journey thus far, one that says I need to correct my course.

What about you? Do you feel comfortable saying, "No!" or asking for help? What type of restrictions dictate what you achieve?

Learning what I’m made of

As perhaps we all do, within any given day and every turn of events I learn what I am made of. Still, I’m ceaselessly amazed at just what stuff it is … although I’ve been uncovering clues since at least the second grade.

To be specific, I was seven and transitioning from second to third grade. My family had recently moved from a small town in North Dakota to an equally small town in Iowa. But, somehow, during that move, my confidence had been misplaced. As my mother laid out my clothing for the first day of school, I became inconsolable at the thought of leaving second grade behind.

Second grade had been kind to me. It had been filled with reading about Dick and Jane and coloring (mostly) within the lines. Recess had been equally rewarding. On some occasions I’d played with the other girls on the merry-go-round and swing sets. On other days, I’d built roads with the boys in the sandbox. Although I was often teased during the latter activity, as my undies would sometimes show, I’d roll my eyes, tug the hem of my dress to the tops of my knees and indignantly retort, “Next time you don’t have to look!”

After school, I’d climb to the top of the butte behind the playground to dig mica from the soil. According to the older children, this silvery paper-like substance was a precious metal which could be traded for candy at the only store in town. Still, they seemed surprised when I was able to conduct just such a transaction with the proprietor there.

But now we had moved and my mother was explaining that the next day I would start third grade. “I don’t know anybody! I’m not ready for third grade,” I had cried, feeling so alone and realizing that the work would be more difficult, the expectations so much higher. “Of course you’re ready,” Mother responded with the patience of one who had three other children to attend to. How little she understood. But, as anyone who has ever had a mother knows, there is truly no use in arguing with them. So the next day, filled with apprehension, I silently prepared for school.

The white school house was very small. With only two rooms, it wasn’t even one quarter the size of my former consolidated school with its multiple classrooms, a cafeteria and gymnasium. I looked at my mother, who’d walked us up to the building, with questioning eyes. “Are you kidding me? This isn’t a school, this is an outhouse!” The words were never uttered; I’d already learned that it was better to reign in such thoughts as this. But the irony of my earlier fear tugged upwards at the corners of my mouth and inwardly I laughed at my own naivety. What a baby I had been!

Mrs. Nicholson, my new teacher, was nice, grandmotherly. With grades three through five sharing a single classroom, I could spot my older sister from across the room. And I shared first names with one of my classmates; by the end of Day One, Brenda R. had become my new best friend.

The school days rolled by and it wasn’t long before Mrs. Nicholson commended me for my oral reading ability -- for using inflection and looking to my audience as I spoke. I’d been reading to my younger siblings since at least age five and they had never noted my gift for the spoken word, so I was surprised that my teacher could be pleased at something so imperceptible. Still I basked in her praise. Here was something I was good at ... without even trying!

By the school year’s end, the world (and third grade in particular) was my oyster.

So, as you might expect, I was very disappointed to learn that my family now faced another move. We were headed to Texas.

Don’t get me wrong: I put up every argument against moving that a child of eight can think of. I would miss my new-found friends. I wasn’t certain I’d like living in a land with no snow. But as the U-Haul truck pulled up to the house and all our worldly goods disappeared inside, I also understood that I had resilience … even if I didn’t yet know the word for it. I knew I’d make new friends. I understood that I carried with me the capacity to excel in Texas, just as I had in Iowa. More importantly, I realized that I had the stuff that it took to deal with any challenge, once I silenced my fears.

I’d tell you that I’m glad I learned these lessons early on, except that I continue to learn them in every challenge that I face to this day. Perhaps this can be said for most of us: throughout our lives we continue to discover what it is we're made of.

What challenges have you conquered in your early life? What did these years reveal to you about yourself?