Walking Away From The Mountain

Some really interesting things have come up work-wise lately. And it's led me to that fork in the road and I get really anxious when there's a fork in the road. I don't like forks. They confuse me. I start to worry I should have taken that lane, then that lane, then that one.

I stand at the fork for days, wondering which one to pick, or more likely, waiting for someone to pick for me. 

And then I realize, shit, I'm a 42 year old woman, I can pick my own fucking road.

I've had two different opportunities pop up to basically work for someone else doing something I don't really want to do.

And now, since I'm the BREADWINNER (heh), my decisions at first were based on money. "Oh, I have to take this work, we need the money."

But in my heart I didn't really want to take the work. I thought at first it might be fear of this particular work (bus tours. BUS TOURS. Mmmm...) that I didn't know how to give a bus tour so therefore, I should learn it and do it and then figure it out.

The more I worked on these projects and the deeper I got into them, the more I wasn't pleased with what I was doing. They were taking over, I found that I was doing more work setting these things up than doing my own work for Chicago Elevated or Lost and Found.

And I found myself anxious. Pissy even.

Now I love it when this happens, I woke up yesterday with the decision in my brain.

Don't do it. Don't do what you don't want to do. John warned me: Don't go down this road unless you really want to because it'll be easy to get stuck in it.

And money? If we need more money I'd rather have that come out of CHICAGO ELEVATED instead of it coming from someone else's business.

I don't want to be a boss and I don't want to have a boss.

So I let myself not want to do it. I let myself realize that whatever I need I can create that for myself. If I'm going to work my ass off, it's not going to be to benefit someone else's business, but my own.

And then I had to do that dreadful act of saying NO. Which is so hard to do. Even when you know it's the right thing.

I feel so much better. I feel confident that whatever I need, Chicago Elevated can provide. I created it. It's helped me so far, it can do it again.

I have the right to say "No Bus Tours. I don't do Bus Tours." And that's okay. It's okay. I'm not doing to lose everything and in fact, I will gain something, because now I'll provide what I need in a way that I know how to do.

I was definitely walking away from the mountain. The mountain that contains what I want from my future. I got off the path and I felt it in my body and mind and heart and I trusted myself.

Sometimes in Buddhism they talk about "no choice." It confuses people, how do we not have a choice? The clearer you are in the things you want, the clearer "no choice" becomes.

There really was no choice here, only one...keep doing what I'm doing. Keep walking towards the mountain.