Where did my life go?

Spring is usually a time when I start to clean out corners, drawers, spaces where “stuff” has collected. I get rid of old files, prepare and organize for tax season, maybe sift through clothes and decided what stays and goes.

My office has been a place of identity for me all my life. Even as a child I had my own desk and space that contained my work or ideas, where I journaled and collected images and scraps of memories. So my adult office has many of those similar things but in a more expansive way. It’s where I was building my new path following the corporate departure three years prior, with flipchart sheets on the wall, lists of things to do, files of clients I had worked with or new projects I was starting, and loads of research and reading that took place each week to keep me abreast of changes in my industry and that of my clients.

When I came home from the hospital in 2020, I ignored my office for awhile. It sat here like a time capsule for months. Slowly I took down the sheets from the wall, tossed out the lists. But I hadn’t gone into my file cabinets to purge material.

Until about a month ago. It was a strange thing to do and very eye opening. So much engagement with companies and people, organizations and conferences. Contacts around the country and some around the world. Proposals and research completed, and proposals for new projects that were evolving.

What struck me is how much I found of myself in this work and how enlightening it was that I did all of this, and it was mine. So whether it went somewhere or not, it was my “brain trust” churning this out. My 30 years of experience flowed through these conversations and embedded in the pages. Some of it was interesting and new and some was just “old hat”, but I owned it and this was the direction where I was going.

Then the pandemic blew everything up and it all went away.

Then cancer decided to further blow me up and ensured it all disappeared for the next three years.

So it’s been jarring to lose everything and try to find your place in the world again. Through this entire process my head has continued churning—even on those days that were depleting and exhausting. Reading my notes over the many months, it’s a recurring theme of “what do I do with myself now?” It’s been a persistent nagging in my head to know why things went this way and what was the universe trying to tell me— that I wasn’t on the right track, that this wasn’t where my life’s work was going to be in the future?

How do we know what that track may be and when you’ve been hit with a message this large, how do you not pay attention and use the experience to create a new roadmap?

As it happens, I have several things keeping me busy this spring and I’ll look forward to being outside more this summer and having the strength and energy to get moving.

I’m reaching back and having conversations with people who have reached out to me for help or just a conversation—paying it forward where I can. Following a passion and even having one is a unique feeling. It’s perhaps the first time that my head and heart feel like they’re in the same place, moving in the same direction.

My wall has a different look these days—more colorful, inspiring and with all sorts of wonderful notes from wonderful people. What I’m finding is there’s a certain freeing quality to redefining your world and how you spend your time in it—because I see it differently now.

So who knows what the next evolution may look like, but the path is more clear and we take our steps forward day by day.