Living a self directed life is at the heart of what I’m doing.
What I do, & how I do it, matters. To me.
But there’s no package tour where I’m headed. I have to figure out the travel plans myself, & as mentioned in my previous post – my road map to ‘get there’ is scattered among many scribbled notes on bits of paper! I’ve found the path I wanted, now it’s time to follow it wherever that goes! Yet I find myself expected to let it evolve into whatever it can be, & it’s become obvious that it’s going to take some time to ‘get there’ – probably 2 years. Sigh.
The realization, that it simply cannot be rushed, I find myself struggling to work with. It’s made me aware of just how vastly different the self directed, creative life I want to live is, in comparison to my experience working for others, employee life – or my student life!
Self directed living means not being told what to do, or what’s next, by anyone else but myself! I am the one figuring these things out, which means I am expected to turn to myself for my own answers. This brings up a confronting issue – just how much trust do I have in myself, to do that? A critical component is knowing myself really well, being honest about what’s important to me, & valuing what I want to experience as my life. This is NOT about what I should do, but what I actually, in my heart, WANT to do, for no one else but myself. Even more challenging, is NOT looking at what everyone else is doing, but only focusing on what I want to be doing, & how I want to do it ! Without clarity on these points, I can’t prioritize my focus, or figure out a clear next step.
It feels like I am driving where I want to go when I am in self directing mode. I am in charge, & it feels scary, but I’ve never felt so alive either! When I worked for others, I felt like a passenger being driven somewhere I didn’t want to go, but it seemed the only way to earn money to house & feed myself, & later my children too, so being employed & having a career, was how I did that!
At the time, I simply wasn’t aware, or knew of any better way to live. It took the death of my mother to reality slap me awake so hard that I actually started making the life changes I’d realized I wanted to make, but just never did.
For this to work well for me, it has to be guided by a clear focus on the life I want to be experiencing, & built up on short term planning. One small step at a time, put into action, builds up to ‘getting’ to the life I want to be experiencing, which is going to take about 2 years to accomplish. Seems appropriate to title my creative life, one page document – ‘Project VW’ – because it has to be firmly centered around what I want to do, & how I want to do it.
Vicky xxx
