The Universe Archives - Page 2 of 4 -

On the Road to Wisdom

November 27, 2011 by Farewell Stranger ·

Wisdom ceases to be wisdom when it becomes too proud to weep, too grave to laugh, and too selfish to seek other than itself.
~ Khalil Gibran

At the beginning of this year I did two things: I started this blog and I joined a One Little Word class. I thought I’d write here a bit and see where it went, and here I am almost a year later, fully immersed. I thought I’d dive right into the One Little Word class and do all the exercises, and almost a year later I haven’t done many of them but my word is fully immersed in my life.

I had a tough time choosing the word, and was skeptical about the common “the word will choose you” reassurance. Initially I thought I’d choose “improve” as my word because that’s what I wanted to do in many areas of my life. But thinking that was a good word was really a symptom of my problem, and luckily I came to my senses and realized that was too self-critically negative.

And then my word chose me.

I don’t remember how it happened. It just came to me one day, I think, and that was that. I didn’t know what it meant at the time, but I do now.

Seek.

verb, sought, seek·ing.

–verb (used with object)

1. to go in search or quest of: to seek the truth.

2. to try to find or discover by searching or questioning: to seek the solution to a problem.

3. to try to obtain: to seek fame.

4. to try or attempt (usually fol. by an infinitive): to seek to convince a person.

5. to go to: to seek a place to rest.

6. to ask for; request: to seek advice.

7. Archaic: to search or explore.

For too long I was too proud to weep (figuratively, anyway, or at least in public) and too grave to laugh. I lost sight of what was important.

Actually, I don’t think I knew what was important.

I do now. In part, at least. I was seeking something I didn’t know was lost, and now I’ve started to find my way back to it.

I was seeking myself.

This search (journey? quest?) has led me places I would not have anticipated a year ago, and now a new stage is beginning.

A new home.

A new place.

A new start.

I look forward to where seeking wisdom will take me, and what part of myself I will find on the way there.

Linked up with:

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Filed Under: Be enough me, Hello, Inspiration · Tagged With: Be enough me, expectations, firsts, gratitude, hope, living life, perspective, The Universe

New House and New Traditions

November 4, 2011 by Farewell Stranger ·

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So, we bought a house yesterday.

<– That’s it. Pretty good, eh?

We jogged into town on Wednesday afternoon, bought an iPhone (because, obviously) and started looking at houses yesterday at 10 am. The deal was done about 10:00 last night.

We are totally thrilled with how this worked out. It’s almost miraculous. We got a house we love and – get this – the possession date we wanted. We’ve agreed to be out of our house by the 26th and will be into the new one on the 28th. Of November.

So that means we’ll be in our new house for Christmas.

I’m not actually sure what our Christmas plans will be this year, but I think it’s going to be a little odd. We’ve spent every Christmas except two at home with my parents and other assorted family. We’ve picked out a tree at the same nursery every year. We’ve done the same lights tour. We’ve eaten Christmas dinner at the same table and hung our stockings from the same fireplace. Those things will change and it will be okay, though I’m feeling a bit sentimentally sad about it.

What we will have, however, is this, which we woke up to this morning:

There’s actually no guarantee we’ll have a white Christmas but if we do I will be a very happy girl. Despite many years on the coast, it never feels like Christmas without snow. And I think this little dude will like it too:

We’ll be in town for good just in time to gear up for Christmas, which will involve my sister and her husband, and my parents are planning to come out too. My mother-in-law lives here, so we won’t be short on family.

And it will be kind of fun to start new traditions and find new holiday comforts. We’ll go visit the great light display they do in a park here and actually enjoy hot chocolate in the car without being too warm. I’ll prove to Connor that I do, in fact, know how to build a snowman. We’ll bake my mom’s Christmas cookies in our new oven in our totally awesome new kitchen, and then we’ll sit by our new fireplace and eat them. (Or maybe I’ll leave the boys downstairs and eat mine upstairs because our new bedroom has a fireplace in it. Squee!) We’ll introduce our stockings to their new home and make sure Santa knows we’ve moved.

And we’ll enjoy the snow. Until we’re sick of it.

***

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Filed Under: Happy things, Stuff I like · Tagged With: family, favourite activities, firsts, hope, living life, The Universe

The Truth

October 30, 2011 by Farewell Stranger ·

Just before 4:30 on Friday, I left my afternoon meeting and got into my car. I drove a few blocks and then pulled over to an empty parking spot on the side of the road, pulled out my BlackBerry, and wrote my resignation.

And hit send.

As of November 19, I will no longer be employed at the organization I have worked at for almost six years. I will no longer be employed at all, in fact.

The truth is this causes me a slightly-larger-than-small amount of anxiety.

The truth is it’s more freeing than scary.

When we started talking about making this move I presumed I’d get a job and then move. I applied for some, interviewed, and then sat there waiting for the phone to ring. And one afternoon I realized I was waiting for the phone to ring but hoping it didn’t.

That realization was freeing too.

By all normal logic, I should have a job. My husband is a stay-at-home dad and I have a preschooler who’s growing so fast I’m starting to hope capris become a hot style for three-year-old boys.

We intend to buy a house in Calgary, but with the equity in our current house we’ll be able to do that. We sold that house on Friday – the papers have been signed, the for-sale sign has been flipped, and less than a month from now we’re going to hit the road.

I’ve busted out of the golden handcuffs before and it’s not easy. (One of these days I’ll have to tell you the story about how spending a weekend at an alternative treatment centre with my mom when she had cancer ultimately led me to leave a totally secure job and take a pay cut to do the kind of work I wanted to do.) It hasn’t been easy this time around either. But I have never once doubted it’s the right thing to do, and after all that’s happened over the last few months I’m not prepared to take the wrong job just so I have a job. Sometimes I think you have to just GO. The right job will find me.

“Aren’t you scared?” a good friend of mine asked a few weeks ago. “Shitless,” I answered truthfully. But I’d rather be full of fear for a short time than full of regret forever. (And then last week, for similar reasons, that friend quit his job too. The truth is out there, people. It’s spreading, and it’s AWESOME.)

The truth is we spend too much time being scared. We think “scary” equals “wrong” so we stay scared and we do nothing. We stay the course.

The truth is I think I’d die if I stayed the course. Physically, I already came as close as I care to. I’m not letting what I “should” do steal my soul.

Image credit: kxlly on Flickr

There’s a whole other layer to what’s happening in my work environment right now and, while I decided to move on before that begun, it’s been, frankly, awful. There are things I want to pour on this page, but I can’t. That’s one truth I can’t tell. So I don’t have this outlet and my emotion and frustration and grief over a difficult situation have overflowed elsewhere.

Truth: It’s affecting people I care about, and that’s hard.

Truth: It’s damaged a relationship, possibly irreparably, and I regret that while at the same time feel like I can’t do anything about it.

Truth: It feels like I’m leaving part of me behind in this process. Not just the part I have intentionally ditched, but a good part. A stable part. A rational part.

It’s the truth. But it has consequences.

Filed Under: Be enough me, Happy things, Hard things · Tagged With: admissions, anxiety, Be enough me, hope, living life, telling the truth, The Universe

Message in an Ebook

October 7, 2011 by Farewell Stranger ·

The evening quiet of a house after a toddler goes to sleep is like a grand piano after a concert. The sudden silence pokes you, pushes you, saying, “Notice me.” And I do – aware that the individual parts of the house, like the ebony and ivory of a piano, resonated not long ago with notes both high and low from being crashed upon in the music of life with a small child. The tones echo in my head, growing dimmer and dimmer until all I can hear is silence.

The silence, in my experience, is temporary. New noises quickly take over the available space in my brain. Thoughts of the day, big decisions, what ifs.

It was in this frame of mind that I wearily washed my face and climbed into bed the other night. After my regular browse through the social sphere – commenting on blogs, tweeting, laughing at jokes on Facebook – I shushed the noises and turned to Kindle.

Joanne Bamberger

I’ve been reading through Welcome to My World, the ebook I contributed to. I’m enjoying the stories by women whose voices I know – honest, poignant, and funny – and revelling in getting to know those I’ve yet to encounter in the wide world of blogging. That night I reached chapter 9 – Building My Empire by Joanne Bamberger (aka Pundit Mom). I love her writing and her point of view never fails to intrigue. She’s far more politically savvy than I, so I looked forward to what I expected would be a different perspective from mine.

But that, of course, is not how the Universe works.

Reading about the path of a woman whose (current) career I admire, I got to the part about how she ended up a stay-at-home mom when an expected opportunity didn’t materialize after she brought her daughter home from China.

Oh, I thought.

Joanne writes about how the loss of her professional identity affected her and how, through the introduction to blogging, she became a work-from-home writer mom.

Hmm, I thought.

I’ve wondered if I could do that. Okay, truth: I want to do that. I know I can but I’ve wondered if I will be able to make it work.

“I’d love to see more women explore this third way of combining motherhood and professional fulfillment,” Joanne writes.

She offers her advice on how to do that. And what do you know – it’s what I, too, believe to be true. But I’m not going to give away her secret – you’ll have to buy it for yourself to find out. (It’s only $6.99!)

(Joanne, I’m up for the challenge! Thank you for the sage advice and a beautifully written essay.)

Filed Under: Book reviews, Happy things, Motherhood, Writing · Tagged With: blogging, community, The Universe

I Believed Once

October 5, 2011 by Farewell Stranger ·

I believed once.

I thought I could make a difference. I followed my heart and used my voice and put it out there. I worked. Hard. I worked through lunch. I worked late, came home, had dinner, and worked some more.

I wrote. I wrote and wrote and brainstormed because I believed. And because I believed I put my whole heart in to my work.

The path my life has taken over the last five years has made me who I am now. Some of that evolution is on this blog, but so much of it is because of my work – the absolute passion and dedication I put into it, the opportunities I’ve had, and the people I’ve worked with.

My work changed who I knew I could be, but it’s the evolution chronicled here that has changed who I am. It has changed what I believe.

It has changed what I believe I can do.

I believe I’ve done what I can do in my current job, especially because recent changes have taken the work in a different direction. Despite knowing this is what I must do, I do it with a heavy heart. I played a big part in building something bold, and because that something will inevitably change – partly because the organization has changed but also because that’s what things do – I feel as though I’m saying goodbye not only to a job and a team but to a piece of myself. When I pack up my desk the box containing my pictures will also contain the shadow of my contribution, exiting the building with me dressed in both regret that things must change and an attempt at preserving something that meant something to me.

It’s time for me to move on.

We’ve spent the better part of the last month sprucing up our house and on Friday a For Sale sign will appear on our lawn.

On a date in the not-too-distant future I will write a letter to my boss and sign a piece of paper giving my house over to someone else.

I’m leaving the work and the people and the organization that changed how I think about what work is.

I’m leaving the first house we owned, and the house I brought my son home to.

I’m leaving the city I grew up in, where my parents – and my son’s grandparents – are six minutes away.

I’m leaving who I used to be in order to find out who I can become.

Who I think I am now.

I believed once.

And I’m choosing to believe again.