Not the Beginning of the End, but End of Beginning

AUTHOR NOTE: I started writing this post on March 3 and literally the next day started talking to my now new coworker about my now new job. So. Funny how life works out.

Let’s get the important stuff - and the actual reason I logged in here - out of the way. As I get to in this post, I felt like a new chapter was about to begin for me and as part of that I wanted to get my digital house in order since that has sort of gone to Hell in a handbasket over the past four years. So, here’s the new way thing are gonna work, or at least this is my plan:

• I am re-launching my blog on my old website! I have been blogging professionaly since October of 2007 and on my own site since May 2009. So much has changed for me personally, professionally and the world is not what it was. I am generally very committed to learning publicly and I have for sure had some gems and but also some things that just make me cringe. All of it though - good and bad - just felt like an albatross. So I have archived all my old posts and am starting fresh. Going forward, I plan on writing the meatier one topic pieces there.

• I’m keeping the Commonplace Book though! I started this because the inability to always do things with some nuance and the immediacy of twitter was getting me into trouble but I refused to be silenced [insert Oprah gif], so I moved my public commentary here while I figured it all out. I initially wanted this to be like the commonplace books of old and work more as a digital scrapbook but I did find myself writing longer pieces. Going forward , this is going to be as I originally intended with more random thoughts and links, and I also hope to update more frequently. I will log off from twitter when they pry it from my cold dead hands.

So anyway, let’s check in with Sarah of 11 weeks ago….

At the risk of jinxing it, and with full acknowledgement of all of the loss and trauma people have experienced over the past year/few years, I think I see the light at the end of the tunnel? I don’t want to say “I think we’re gonna be okay” because…we’re not. We’ve all been harmed in some way recently and one of the things I’ve learned in my own healing journeys is you have to acknowledge trauma and hurt and things will never be just as they were. You can get close, but don’t feel bad if it’s never there.

This is a good time to bring up kintsugi, which is a practice in Japanese art and culture to not hide cracks or damage, but to highlight them in gold and make damage beautiful. About ten years ago I had a joint double whammy of a hysterectomy (which left my stomach covered in half a dozen laproscopic scars) and publicly announcing that I was being treated for depression (because having a hysterectomy in your early 30s is a bummer, among other things) and I generally felt not only personally broken but that everyone else viewed me that way. So the idea of embracing my literal and metaphorical scars and finding them beauty in them was very appealing.

Anyway, if you’re interested in thinking more about trauma, I found this video series analyzing WandaVision (which I still haven’t actually gotten around to watching) fascinating.

So anyway, I have found myself really starting to think about what’s coming next for me. There’s the events of the past year, the events of the past four (not just politics - let’s not forget my mom died in early 2017) and it’s been almost exactly 10 years since I strayed from the path that I thought I’d spend my professional life in. (While simultaneously upending my personal life. One star, do not recommend.) I’ve questioned myself so much over that time if I made the right choice and I think I did but wow has it been a journey.

I don’t know, I just can’t help but feel like this phase of the journey is wrapping up and it’s time to take what I’ve learned about what I liked and didn’t like and figure out what’s next. So I tried to come up with a “mission statement”:

(AUTHOR NOTE FROM PERSPECTIVE OF MAY 2021 AND MY NEW JOB: NAILED IT.)

Now that I know what I want and have a framework for what to look for, I feel a lot more confident going forward. I’m not in rush or anything and I might be able to accomplish this where I am now, it just feels good to know what to look for.

(AUTHOR NOTE FROM PERSPECTIVE OF MAY 2021: (A) LOL (B) I probably would have thought twice about this part and deleted it, but can’t fire me now.)

Okay, this is as far as I got…

….but I did have plans to continue more on about life post-covid. I think?

Anyway, here’s to journeys ending and new beginnings.