I’ve spent most of my adult life building. Not in the build a six figure business sense… just adapting to what came up and building from there. Getting laid off from my 65k a year accounting job and knowing I wanted to build a life around my art meant diving in head first to learning the skills to run my own business… and then I built two.
Learn how to vend properly. Improve my photography skills. Learn how to edit…. Build the website. Rewrite the product catalog. Create the contract. Refine the pricing. Solve the problems in front of me.
I like building. I’m good at it. Building makes me feel productive. Useful. Like I’m moving in the right direction… it gives me something tangible to point to at the end of the day and say, there… okay, I did that.
What I’m learning lately is this season isn’t about building just yet. I have a feeling I am in a season of needing to listen. Needing to witness. And if I’m being honest, I don’t like listening nearly as much. Its slow, it doesn’t produce a deliverable, I don’t get to check a box and say, okay now that is done.
It asks different questions.
Not what should I build next?
But what keeps pulling at my attention?
Not how do I make this work?
But why does this matter to me?
Those questions are harder to answer because they can’t be solved by researching my way out of them. They ask that I sit with them long enough for something to emerge and be present enough to witness what emerges.
When I imagine the future, I don’t picture a massive company or a packed calendar.
I picture light pouring through my windows in the afternoon.
A small space surrounded by nature.
A garden, filled with plants grown from the seeds I’ve been collecting from last years flowers and veggies I enjoyed.
Room to breathe. Hosting friends in my space and serving them meals that remind them food can be creative. It looks like having work that takes me into the worlds of people who care deeply about what they do and why and how they do it.
I want to spend time in those places. To understand what makes them special. To pay attention long enough to tell the story.
I don’t know exactly where this path leads. That’s the part I’m still getting used to. For a long time, I believed that clarity arrived and then we’d take action but sometimes clarity arrives BECAUSE you take the step to follow the threads of what makes you feel alive, when you notice the things pulling at your attention. Those patterns start to reveal themselves.
So for now, that’s what I’m doing.
Paying attention. Following my souls curiosity. Noticing the full body yes and nos that arise when I think about what the future holds. Paying attention feels SO much like standing still, or spinning my wheels and going nowhere fast. But I’m reminding myself that spending time forcing answers takes more time than noticing what keeps showing up.
It may not be as satisfying as finishing a project or knowing exactly what steps to take.. but slowing down long enough to noice, feels important.
Staying true to my life motto of :
Stay curious, love harder.
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