I don’t know how it will happen. The next part of my life. Though there are moments of panic and anxiety, I am mostly allowing myself to not know. And, to be honest, that has been very hard.
So many people want me to tell them. What’s next? What’s the plan? What are you going to do? And I feel the pull, the desire to have something to tell them, to make them feel better. Sometimes I’ll even invent something, say it out loud, and be as surprised as they are at what I have said. Because I can really only honestly say what I am doing right now. That I will do the next thing that comes before me. One thing at a time. It is the only way anything ever gets accomplished, right? It is not possible to be in more than one place, doing more than one thing.
That is not the way we have been trained to think, though. We have been taught to plan, plan, plan. To be so busy we can hardly function. To multitask.
I hate the idea of multitasking. I used to pride myself on my ability to divide my attention into pieces, have multiple things happening all at once. I would read a book while listening to music while riding on a train or bus. Stimuli from every direction. Now, that seems so absurd. Nothing gets done completely or well in that state of distraction. Focus, attention, presence. Those are much more powerful allies in my day-to-day activity.
However, as they say, for every great truth, the opposite is also true. When it comes to furniture projects, I like to have more than one going at the same time. I think because painting and staining involves a lot of down time, so it allows me to rotate between projects. My creativity gets sparked when I’m in the zone like this, several different redesigns at my fingertips. I was lucky enough to experience this a bit last weekend. I just have a few finishing touches to bring the projects to a close.
And as I walk, I know the path will appear.
design + surrender 