It’s my own fault.
After all, I’m the one who claimed “living in the question” for my year. And boy have I lived in the question this year (and yes, indeed, we have 1/2 a year to go)!
Last year, I changed course about half way through the year. This year I think I’ll hold steady in the question, which is hardly steady as far as life goes, so maybe that’s the same thing as changing course. It hasn’t been easy, this not knowing. But it has stretched me in ways I might not have gone otherwise.
Part of my problem (always) is listening to other’s ideas of how the world works. Mostly because I want to believe them. But I am not them, and my world does not work like their world, or I have missed something because it is not yet time for me to see it, or I am on a bee-line to learn something I am not yet aware of, or in fact who I am being is due for a metamorphosis.
So as per usual I have been in the deep darks resisting what’s next because it does not fit my own personal this-is-what-I’m-going-to-do plan. That lifted about a month ago with the realization that I could stay stuck in the dark or move toward what’s next.
I had no idea what was next.
So I put out a “help” to the Universe.
Things started showing up – or maybe they were always there and I was just not yet ready to see them. They are not the things I wanted but things that will work. I’m not there yet, but it looks as if the “next thing” for me is going to be a full-time job working for someone else. For a long while. Since my life choices did not include guaranteed retirement income.
By the way, even with these not-exactly-what-I-had-in-mind things showing up, I wouldn’t change one of those choices. Not even the bad ones. Because each brought its own lesson. And one of the lessons is that I don’t have to bang my head bloody up against a wall of my own making before I change course.
I spent time feeling like a failure for arriving at this point. Then art journaling wafted into my life and, ta-dah!, I had art on the fly – art that can be done in the interstices of time left after a full-time job is done for the day. That is a gift. I am loving the people it has brought into my life, and the way it has expanded what me and my gal pals are sharing and creating together. I am loving the way it is shifting out into all of my art, not just the play stuff.
When I find that perfect job, I will love that I am no longer counting pennies at the end of the month! And it will leave space for my art in some form or another.
And who knows where submitting to the flow will ultimately lead? Grace falls out of the sky in the most unexpected disguises. I am not going to brush it off.
I don’t know. I don’t know who else out there needs to read this to know they are not alone (but I trust that since it was called onto “paper” today, someone else is looking).
I do know that I believe that things happen for a reason. I believe that I must be needed “out there” somewhere, not here in my studio for now. Someone somewhere has also called out “help” and I am the one who can answer. And that’s okay.
Wylde Women’s Wisdom
1. You are not alone or the only one. Look around. Your tribe is looking for you too!
2. You are imperfect; I am imperfect; the whole world is gloriously, wonderfully, on-goingly imperfect. So that must be the way it’s supposed to be! Celebrate that!
3. You can make up your own rules as you go along, change them when they are worn out or used up, borrow someone else’s ideas and try them on for size. The only real rules are the ones you choose to follow – do you know where they came from? Do you still want them?
4. You are forgiven. Whatever the thing is that is deep and dark and throws shadows everywhere? You are forgiven for that. Bless it. Release it. Onward.
Tammy Vitale
14 Comments
[…] you’re the only one in the whole world who is trying to make art and not making a living. You are not the only one and you are not […]
This a beautiful example of Woman’s wisdom that you are sharing with us here. I appreciate hearing your stories of doing things in your own sweet, wylde way. Thank you x o
thanks Emelie! I appreciate your kind words! always good to see you here or over at your blog-we definitely do resonate to many of the same things
Tammy, you definitely had something to say to your tribe… and what you were called to write connects with my on such a deep level…
“Things started showing up – or maybe they were always there and I was just not yet ready to see them.”
This phrase especially resonates with me. I feel like oftentimes, what we seek is actually right in front of us (or actually a part of us) and we refuse to acknowledge it or cannot see it because we are searching for something bigger, seeking a better fit, looking for a more complicated answer.
I love that you are at peace with what shows up, even if it wasn’t what you expected or hoped for. Your life (and those of your tribe) is richer for your appreciation of the present.
Baye: It is what it is. Fighting with what is doesn’t work! Crazy making!(I should know, I’ve done it enough!)
Might as well embrace it and get on with it!
Thanks for stopping by!
I, too, came to the realization that I would have to work well into what others call “the retirement years.” I also don’t regret my decisions. I stayed home and taught my kids–not for everyone, but perfect for us.
Stacey – thanks for sharing that great quote!
hugs!
Carolyn: Answers – that would be so awesome. I expect I’ll get them in hindsight. That’s the way they usually come in!
thanks for stopping by!
Tammy, You are so awesome and brave. it takes a lot of courage to be in the question and to shift gears from what you thought you wanted to being open to changing to something completelydifferent and finding the positive in it. I look forward to you’re sharing about the positive changes that come about as the question eventually leads you to some unexpected answers. who knows what marvels live within that question? hugs to you, my Wylde sister.
Hey Tammy!
Thanks so much for such a great post. I also love that you are “living the questions.”
You probably already know the Rilke quote from his Letters to a Young Poet, but it bears repeating:
…I would like to beg you dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.
Thanks again for living the questions and holding the space for us to do the same.
I know I can’t hear this message enough.
Jill: The part of me that wants it easy wants what some people are offering to be true. But it isn’t for me. To deny that is to deny my experience. You’re right: totally crazy making! Better to sit in the not knowing. I love the way you put it: “what a relief.” Hadn’t thought that but I will now!
I’m here and I’m reading too Tammy! I am inspired and/or reassured and.or provoked (in a good way) every time I read what you write here (and in your FB posts).
I particularly liked this today: “But I am not them, and my world does not work like their world…” — oh YES, I get that! I subscribed from a huge personal development blog that everyone raves about and puts up on their “I love this” page for exactly that reason. I just could not see the world the way she was seeing it, and it was doing my head in.
Maybe Shakespeare had it right – “to thine own self be true”… which sometimes means tuning OUT as many messages as we tune IN.
I don’t know. Which is why your living in the question year is such a blessing. What a relief – to not have to KNOW for an entire year!
You are needed, and a blessing in my life!
Thanks, Barbara! I always feel like I’m not where I’m supposed to be – that I’m missing something,that I should be paying more attention, whatever. If I live in the question then there is no other place to be, because there is no answer that I could have missed. It’s really helped me live more in the flow.
Mostly. ;]
I’m here and I’m reading! Great post, Tammy! I often feel like I’m waiting for my life to begin, and I have to remind myself that this is my life, and I’m living it, even during the waiting and the metamorphoses. So your year of living the question really resounds with me.