Beyond the Plan

There are moments when I feel doubt, where I can still hear my monkey mind shouting at me that I should just stop or give up. But it is in the distance and I can block the chants out with music,  to do lists, and deep breaths. What I didn’t realize was how doing rather than planning feels so different. Two months into this new way of being everything is continuing to grow. The world is vibrant and I am part of it once again.

Still, until the past few weeks I have been staying reasonably safe. Doing things that I knew I could easily finish. But then an idea began to form, not the sort you just jot down in a journal, but a fully realized one. In some ways it is the project that I have been working towards over the past few years. It has come so naturally to focus my energy on it. Sitting down each day I am finding joy in the writing and drawing that I am doing. As the pieces come together and build on each other I feel stronger and more myself. Sitting down to work I am completely present.

This form of focus has been missing from my life and I never understood how powerful it was, until I returned to it. Now I see how doing something larger, something where my creativity and experience comes together, fills me. I want to honor this with the work I do by respecting it as valuable and taking the time to do it well and thoroughly. All of this is new to me, giving into depth and slowing down. It becomes more than a job, or a project, it is a new way of being.