Yang Girly Girl

I’m in Seattle. It’s moist. It’s beautiful. It’s so quiet. That’s right. Quiet.

I just left Las Vegas. Does heat and dust make noise? It must. Oh, there’s traffic here…plenty of it…more than in Las Vegas…I think. It’s hard to tell because rush hour in Las Vegas was anywhere between the hours of 3 a.m. and 2 a.m. the following day.

As I said, there is plenty of traffic, but which direction it’s heading is not clear. In California, I always knew that the water was west. Here, the place is surrounded by water…not just ocean water… harbor water….lake water…pond water…rain water. You’re saying, “and this is a new thought? After all, didn’t you move to the Pacific Northwest?”

Yes, one of the reasons I wanted to move here is because of all that water. But, do you really have to put on a snorkel to get your bearings? Squishy is a good word for it.

I have this idea that the whole state rests on some sort of hydraulic rollaway bed….with mushrooms.

It’s funny. In Las Vegas, if they discovered mold in your house, they sent out the National Guard and the Haz Mat team. Here, they’re proud of it and have competitions about how potent it is. They’re not afraid of it…this is mold country. “How bad is it, I mean can you make your own penicillin yet, or do you just have that certain ‘smell’? You know, the county fair’s coming up, if you’d like to submit a sample.”

I have a new found fear of mold. I came to the right place. The trade off is that everything is alive and oxygen abounds. It’s like going to an Oxygen Bar 24/7, but it comes to you gratis, whether you like it or not.

I live about three miles from Puget Sound. At 3 p.m. every day, a breeze blows through the house with the whisper of the last wave cuddling the shore, after it lulls in the susurrations from the hundred foot pines surrounding my house on it’s way to my back door. This is truly God’s country or a country full of gods, take your pick.

It wasn’t easy getting here. My biggest dilemma was getting across the Nevada and Utah deserts with my fifteen year old trees, …er house plants. We had placed them in the back of the moving truck. We rigged a couple of ice chests, attached some fans with a power inverter, and hoped for the best. It should work, since this was how we kept ourselves cool on long trips when I was a kid.

Four days later, we arrived and the trees survived, although a bit weary from their special sauna. The cats survived as well. Whoopie, our oldest, relaxed in her kennel with the disinterest of a seasoned traveler. She really should write a book on travel etiquette for cats. Moxie was so anxious, I could have knitted an afghan with all the fur she shed.

And for all this nirvana, I find myself missing Las Vegas:

 

For the inferno

For the dust

For the breakfast special at Red Rock Casino

For the need for deodorant

For the grocery store within a block of my house

For the cacophony

For the need to feel needed

 

Okay, that last one says it all, doesn’t it? It’s true. I feel lost. My friend tells me I’m a ship without an anchor, and it’s stormy weather. I told myself that this couldn’t be happening. What a whiner.

It’s too bad I can have breakfast, lunch, and dinner on the waterfront and eat the freshest seafood I’ve ever tasted. It’s too bad that I’m surrounded by 100 foot pine trees and the hardest thing I have to do every day is go for a walk and think creatively. Poor me. I guess I’d rather go back to working for someone, make mediocre wages, and plan my vacations around the closing of the books. My whining really started annoying me, after all, didn’t I now have what I’ve always wanted for my life?

Have you ever made a decision with the utmost faith about changing your life, but it doesn’t feel exactly as you’d envisioned? What did you do?

I don’t think it’s about the external surroundings or the abundance or the lack thereof. It’s about you.

All I can say is that changes are a real opportunity to take a good look at who you are. When those things that define you are gone from this material life, what’s left?

I chose to change my career and my geographic location. That’s easy to negotiate. What happens when people and relationships are suddenly gone from your day to day life? There’s only you and your life altering decision. Your mind becomes too quiet; like Seattle; like Katmandu; like the “clouds of tumbling mirth…until you bound back to the surly bonds of earth.” That’s an excerpt from one of my favorite poems, called “High Flight.” Read the whole thing here.

It can be everything you envisioned, but it doesn’t seem to happen in the time you anticipate.

Why does it take so long to create your magnificent life?

That’s one of the things I allowed Las Vegas to do to me. I became cynical. I became jaded. I became impatient. My magnificent life should happen right now. The truth is there is no reason why it can’t.

A friend of mine asked me recently why I was so impatient with myself.

“Why don’t you just read for a while? Take walks along the water. Detox from your life.”

“I don’t see that as getting my act together.” The act…the action…..the execution of creating my so called life, and I’m feeling the pressure of getting it done now. Naturally, I have an agenda, and being the control freak that I am, everything should follow that agenda. I have a friend who lives in San Diego. We’ll call her Serena, because that’s her name. There’s nothing serene about her, because SHE makes things happen….exactly the way she wants them to. Talk about the girl’s midas touch. She hasn’t always had things easy, but she has facilitated everything based on her plan, her agenda. Was it the execution, or was it her intention? Both.

That’s right. It won’t happen until I let it happen. It all goes back to that adage. The more you try to control, the less control you have. Kim (my husband) keeps saying, “It’ll happen when it doesn’t matter.” That’s a quote from Kneller, a character in one of his favorite movies, Wrist Cutters, A Love Story. Scary, isn’t it? I know, I know. I haven’t seen it but he seems crazy about it…we’ll have to get into that in another posting.

You’ve seen it happen a million times. When something goes wrong, you charge in, start frenetically trying to control the situation, and for some reason it picks up momentum, attracts all kinds of unexpected obstacles, and continues until you give up. That’s the secret. Give it up. Trust the wisdom inside of you and most of all, have faith in yourself.

It doesn’t mean sitting on your rear and waiting for a great idea or a bag of money to drop on your head. You still have to create it, but it’s the way you create it that makes it happen.

It starts with defining the essence of your intention. For me, my intention was to make a living doing what I passionately love to do, but I felt the pressure of jumping in and doing it without really understanding why I wanted to do this with my life. I wanted to write and build a readership through the internet or published material that would bring a smile to the people who read it.

Did I want to make people laugh? Absolutely. Did I want to make people think? Absolutely. Did I want to make people start appreciating the magnificence that resides in each and every one of them? Absolutely.

…and I want to do that right now.

Wrong.

Making people laugh, making people think, making people appreciate their own gifts comes in their time, not mine. All I am is the facilitator, and it’s my job to facilitate, step back and watch the magic.

It’s about doing the service and not trying to control the outcome. I truly believe that.

As you are thinking about making a career or life change, think about this:

What is it that I really want to do? Make lots of money? But how? I can almost guarantee you that you are thinking of a career change, because something inside of you is not being fulfilled. It’s the part of you that burgeons into joy when you think about it. I can also almost guarantee that what you want to do is something that will enhance the lives of others in some way.

A friend of mine, Steve Pavlina has recently published a book, Personal Development for Smart People. You can pre-order the book on Amazon. It will be released in the fall.

Steve has formulated a model for successful living, and the cornerstones are Truth, Love, and Power. I highly recommend this book. It makes sense, but that’s no surprise. Steve is all about making sense. Interestingly he also claims that the key to finding success is being of service to others in some way.

Let’s get back to you. Your job, when done well, enhances and contributes to the life of the company you work for and those it employs. If you love it, you are doing a tremendous service. If you don’t, you are doing yourself disservice, and ultimately it will lead to disservice to those you work for.

I spent my entire career deluding myself that I was an accountant and an analyst. That’s what I received a paycheck for, but I didn’t love it and it showed.

We all want to be remembered in fond terms. I think we all want to be remembered as someone that created a sustaining contribution to someone, something, somewhere. It begins with being authentic about what you really want in your life and finding a way to share that with others.

Thinking about making a life altering decision? Be patient with yourself. ALLOW the change to happen rather than forcing it through the eye of a needle and having it come out like mushy pasta on the other side. Let it flow through the needle with circumferential perfection and watch things unfold as they should.

Don’t give up. That was more for me than you. Let’s get on with our magnificent life.

We’ve talked about the what, but not the “how.” Stay tuned.