Day 32.
The temptation might be to break into a sprint because you can see the finish line there.
Balloons,
Streamers,
The audience jumping around and shouting for your success.
But don't rush it.
A few more days.
It's a worthy investment.
I've spoken a few times about my journey over the last few years of giving it all up,
Burning out,
Whatever you want to call it.
And thinking it would be a quick turnaround and I'd find a whole new path and find myself walking successfully down it.
That didn't happen.
COVID is part of what happened.
But aside from that,
I think I'd have been on this long journey regardless.
COVID added depth or kept me active in a sense of community that maybe would have otherwise been absent.
So in a strange way,
I'm thinking COVID,
It hit just right in my life,
If something like that can be said to have hit just right.
In addition,
Well,
To excuse myself from all that burnout.
And as I can see it now,
Plainly,
To keep playing the victim so that somebody else might come along and fix things for me.
By the way,
That never happens.
I continue to tell myself things about what I had done,
Where I was,
What I thought I wanted to do.
I excused so much in order to still be this ego.
Where I took off layers of teaching and doing.
I started rebuilding a protective coat of woe is me.
Of what now is.
That if only they hadn't.
We can do this in our lives.
And it's part of the journey.
Sure,
I can wish that I'd been wiser,
Smarter,
Less indulgent.
But those are daily conversations I have to have with myself.
Now,
Now that I have this realization,
A fuller picture,
A better grasp.
Hourly conversations to keep myself rebuilding from this groundwork,
This rubble on which I stand.
Because there's a lot of information out there on this topic,
I knew in the thick of it and the depths of it and those darkest of dark shadows that I'd come out.
There'd be the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel.
There would be that 40th day in the desert where I would emerge.
But boy,
When I was in it,
I really didn't see it.
That's faith.
Believing in something you don't see.
Trusting to keep going when you don't know where to put your foot.
No matter your spiritual inclinations,
Whether they deeply religious and evangelical Christianity,
The many myriad ways,
Tools,
Machinations that humans have contrived and built to make sense of the world.
They are just that,
Really good tools.
But any tool can be used for the wrong purpose.
It's where I'm reminding myself today to pick up the right tool for whatever job I'm facing and use it in the right way.
It makes the job so much easier.
So much more fulfilling.
And it proves out the beauty of the human tut to better first ourselves and then,
If we're lucky,
A small part of the world.
Leonardo da Vinci has said,
Where the spirit does not work with the hand,
There is no art.
This statement,
Along with a few others,
Have carried me back to myself.
Quotes,
Poems,
These things are some of my tools,
The arrows in my quiver I carry with me now to set my feet firmly on this foundation I'm rebuilding.
I'm not empty handed.
I come with a tremendous history of experience and learning of being demolished and finding in the rubble pieces to begin to rebuild.
I hesitate to say I'm grateful for it all because I don't know if I really am.
I certainly would have liked to have avoided the ego crushing the voices in my head that have a negative connotation playing so much louder than the positive.
But I can see how it was necessary.
So for that,
I suppose,
I can express my gratitude.
I may not have built this building back the whole of me at this point,
But as I've said several times here,
That groundwork,
That foundation is so stable and so obvious to me now.
For that,
I'm grateful.
It's good to stand on a solid foundation and know that when you begin to put up those walls and support,
Ceiling beams,
Windows and doors,
They'll withstand the storms of time this time.
Awaken creative.
