The Pursuit of Direction
Feeling lost, stuck, in a rut? Getting moving again requires introspection, creative thinking & a dose of surrender.
“If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.”
The Chesire Cat
Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
The Pursuit of Direction
If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.
WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO BE DOING WITH MY LIFE?
I am becalmed. Like a sailing yacht motionless in the doldrums of the Atlantic. With no wind to fill my sails, I drift, unable to make meaningful progress from the void that has become my daily habitat. I yearn to sail away, but I cannot. I am where I am and for the time being cannot leave.
I never used to be this way. I always considered myself a driven person with a clear destination and an understanding of how to get there. This was me most of my adult life, though recently I’ve found myself questioning where I’m going and why I’m going there. To be clear, by recently I mean the last four or five years, give or take a year or two. That’s how long I’ve been bobbing around on life’s ocean, figuratively speaking.
So what happened? What changed? How did I get here and more importantly, how do I leave this place? If any of this resonates with you then you’re probably asking yourself some very similar questions.
WHAT THE HECK HAPPENED?
My whole life I’ve worked in a highly competitive creative industry, starting out in the equivalent of the mail room and ending up a lot closer to the top of the ladder than the bottom. In fact on a clear day I could see the top rung, maybe even touch it if I stretched out an arm. Life was good and about to get better! A special project, a project that was at that moment the very pinnacle of my career came together. Everything I wanted or at least thought I wanted had just arrived. The culmination of 20 years of hard work had born fruit. A $100 million project. I, as they say, had arrived - the big time.
For a while things were good, but deep-down I wasn’t happy. Something wasn’t right. Something was missing. My personal relationship was also on the ropes at the time, but at least I had work to throw myself into! Life was good, mostly. I had no free time but I was living the dream according to some, the money was good and the future was even better. Then a strange thing happened - I began to question where I was in life, where I was going, who I had become. Had I sold out who I really was or wanted to be to become who I am or what I am, and who or what the heck is that anyway?
The reality is I’m a creative person and the job I was doing was not creative, at least not in the way I needed it to be. Other people had creative jobs but mine was more like the managing director and whilst I loved it, there was no sense of satisfaction, no sense of creation and no sense of fulfillment. In time I came to the only reasonable conclusion there was, I had indeed sold myself out, or more likely, never given myself the opportunity I deserved to become the person I truly wanted to be. Something would have to change or I would risk spending the rest of my life unfulfilled, and the thought of one day drawing my final breath knowing I hadn’t tried to be who I most wanted to be didn’t sit well.
I should add that it was around this time that my mother died, I had a milestone birthday and we were trying to conceive our first child. In short, there was a lot going on.
LIFE’S WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU’RE MAKING OTHER PLANS!
It was now or never, or at least that’s how it felt to me at the time, and so I set off in pursuit of my own dreams, my own ambitions. No longer would I be the enabler of other people’s goals. From this day on I would enable my own goals. My future life would be as a creative, as a writer, as a storyteller and perhaps even one day as an artist too.
Some years into this new direction, or perhaps true direction, I have come pretty close. Close enough to see and at times even touch with an outstretched finger. I’m not painting yet, that’ll come, but I am writing and being paid to write and being paid to be creative and being paid to have ideas and that is amazing. The problem is that I haven’t yet hit the heights I set for myself and that’s not about ego, but it is very much about cold hard cash. Paying the bills. Putting the kids through school and college - yes, trying to start a family has become an actual family! It’s about living the life you want to live, the life you deserve to live, whilst being paid well and the fulfillment and freedom that comes with it. Do I throw in the towel or do I keep on keeping on?
And so I find myself at yet another crossroads, only this time there are more years behind me than ahead, and so the need to take decisions and crucially the right decisions feels even greater, and with that urgency and need for precision or correctness comes stress and anxiety. What if I don’t get it right? How many more chances do I have to fix this or change this or start over? When does time run out and why do some people seem to have everything click into place whereas I seem to get close but never quite over the line? Does the line move? Do I move the line? Does the line even exist? The truth is, at time of writing, I don’t know. I don’t have the answer. I don’t know if anyone does.
What I do know is that inaction leads to nowhere. And whilst I am still becalmed, no wind to fill my sails, I have chosen to accept where I am, to be grateful for the time I have, and to make the very most of everyday. That in itself is direction.
Summary: Get Moving!
It’s okay to be stuck sometimes. It’s okay to feel lost. It’s a part of life. So embrace these feelings and recognize it for what it is, a moment for introspection, to consider and reconsider, to change course if need be. Reset, refocus, and move forwards with bravery and conviction.
About me:
I’m a writer, creative, husband, father, entrepreneur, dog-lover, nature-appreciator and firm believer that we all have the ability to overcome our fears and live our best life. A life overflowing with love, kindness, joy, gratitude and abundance. Let’s help one another.
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