Flying
I set out this year to let go of everything I think to be true about what my work is. This is allowing me to distinguish between what is habit and what is best practice. It has allowed me to let go of things I don’t like doing and make space for new things to enter. It feels like a konmari de-cluttering experience, shocking and freeing.
As a communications pro, I always assumed, for example, that I need to care about social media distribution. Don’t get me wrong — I understand that it is a piece of changing discourse, and I use it with clients. I just don’t care much about keeping a personal profile, and I stopped. It also feels like an echo chamber on my feeds, and I have been unplugging more than ever before. Not tuning out from what is happening in the world, just reducing the frequency and nature of how I get that information. I am feel more informed and happier than I was a year ago.
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While there were perks in this year of letting go, at times too it has felt like I am falling. Free-falling is the term I used, like the opening sequence in Mad Men, when Don is falling from the top of the building but not hitting the ground. I was calling the experience a trust fall into the universe. Then a friend suggested, what if you are flying? And then another person shared the story of Lilith — cast away from the Garden of Eden because she demanded liberation from Adam’s control. Lilith grew wings.
It makes me wonder — anytime we feel like we’re falling, couldn’t we choose to fly?
October 15, 2017
