how to write about all that, about all of what’s going on in my head. I always think ‘i should write about that..’… but everything goes so fast, i cant catch up on my own thinking.
Today, while waiting for the sushi rice to cool up, i went to alex’s site. I remembered a book i saw on her wishlist and i thought i should check for it, but instead, i went to her ‘days’ section and started to read, from the last day she wrote (April 30th 2002) and then going back in time, one year before, April 20th 2001…
* see the comic
I kept reading and reading, was astonished by how, hm, yes, how I could have been writing all that… Of course some elements of our lifes were different, but the states which she have been thru are more than similar to what I’ve been into last year.
I worked as web designer – art director for 4 years. I’d never thought about leaving this business until last year. The only things i can remember of last year are fear, anxiety, confusion, insecurity. Its like a big blur, a big fog in my life. One day you wake up, and you don’t know why, but there is something wrong, and its not getting better days after days… You search to find what’s wrong, but on one side, hm, i think i didn’t wanted to see it, and this didn’t helped me. I think it takes a lot of courage to stop keeping yourself busy and sit down and take time to find out what’s going on.
It took me time and courage to find out that yes, something needed to be changed (and hey, who’s is not afraid of change?). Until that time, i liked my work, but some parts of it were getting too heavy to live with. I suddenly found myself with a back pain that kept me on the couch for 4 weeks, with lots of questions, i guess this was a sign that I needed to do something, right now…
I, by coincidence, started to read ‘The artist way’ at that time. A good friend of mine was starting to read it and told me about it. As a book addict, i bought it just to have a look at it. I started to read it and do the tasks parts, but without any specific goal. I didn’t found myself as beeing a ‘blocked artist’ or something like that, it was just one more nice book to read, and the tasks parts where a bit like a game for me, so i kept reading every week, because it was ‘fun’ to do so.
-note: Now i realize how it was no ‘coincidence’ to find this book and how the ‘fun’ part of it absolutely changed my life. end of note here-
I kept reading, and went more into to process of discovering myself, my past, my goals, my broken parts, my aspirations, days after days, week after week. It took me some week to realize that i started, without knowing it, a inner process of some kind of ‘opening’.
I slowly ‘recovered’ from the life i was into, removed the blur around me slowly to remember where i was coming from, and what i wanted to do with my life.
I went thru all the weeks (the book is divided into 12 weeks), sometimes staying 2 weeks on the same chapter, but i made it thru.
I found myself ready for a change, but which change? no idea. I was living in a country which was not mine, with a working visa depending on my job contract. What happen if i quit my job? what happen if i cant leave my job without having to return to montreal (without my boyfriend?), what happen if i cant find work here, what if, what IF?
I felt trapped, and now that i look back i can understand why i felt that way…
We finally struggled our way to get me a working visa as freelancer, and i decided to quit my job and take some months off to learn german and think about all that. That was the best thing to do, i know now. I just wish it could have been more easy. Transitions can be quite painful, but it is worth it.
(see a earlier posting i made about life transitions).
Tonight, i reading alex’s days from the day she quitted her corporate job to today, i felt somehow stupid. Stupid because, so many time i read about other people’s experience and realize that we ALL feel the same but we ALL think we are alone. I read her days and felt like it was a copy of what i lived. Every day since i left my job are well described there. From the moment where you are not sure of doing a move, from the moments where the whole universe seems to be telling you to go on and do it, the first days where you try to make yourself ‘comfortable’ but its everything but comfortable, the creative ‘boosts’, the days feeling unproductive and so different from the rest of the society, etc etc etc.
Lots of people are making changes in their lifes right now, big or small changes, and we all have the same fears, but also the same will, to be happy, to be ourselves.
I hope that more and more people will share of their experiences, so we can stop feeling alone and so ‘different’ from the rest of the world when what we want is so simple,
happiness…
see alex’s days,
also claire comic’s which is another good exemple of how i felt…
finally the book, The Artist’s Way, by Julia Cameron