Being a driven personality can be misleading to folks looking in from the outside. I have a lot happening in my life at all times, (as no doubt do MOST of us), but I’m finding a new core to it all that has a different sort of rhyme and reason.
I’m enthralled to say that my writing day is taking place on my covered back porch, surrounded by forest, 6 animals, and a strong cup of my favorite coffee. I am a driven personality, but that drive needs a good measure of incubation, quiet time and I’m only NOW in my life, (past the half century point), beginning to embrace that without guilt. I’m finding MY way, my preferred way for living my life. (I can hear Frank Sinatra crooning in my background, amongst the buzzy bees and sweet birdsong of my woods. He blends in beautifully).
To most of us Type A’s, there is a sort of ‘look at me’ burst of confidence and self esteem pump in boasting how BUSY we are. I’m changing gears on that one. Yuk! My newly shifting measure of success and satisfaction has to do with freedom of choice in how I spend my days and the level of satisfaction I have with managing the elements of my world and the outcomes I help create. (Yes, I surround myself with able and passionate people to participate in dreams and visions I’ve set forth)!
Yet, when my boyfriend called this morning at 7:35am and I was still sleeping, (I was tired!), I felt a small ping of guilt considering how much I might have ‘gotten done’ had I risen at his 5am.
This is all changing. Though I do have frequent hours of impassioned ‘work’ taking me out and about, I prefer when all that is my choice, measured around my desires and what satisfies me! And aren’t I lucky. Big secret, it’s a choice!
We all have choice as to how we live the lives which are meaningful to US!
I find this choice a luxury and my carefully crafted world, something for which I am most grateful!
I find my goals asking for this seed planting gestation period or at times rest or quiet. Though I am the driver in all this, there are so many unseen forces at play. For me, a clear intent, spoken frequently, (with my caveat ‘or better, or better’), wields all measure of possibility. I am enjoying enormous fruits of my, gee, can I call it ‘labor’, it’s certainly not the type referenced in the Puritanical world in which I was raised!
Having this past year taken up cycling, (inspired by this very same impassioned boyfriend), I consider its metaphor. When pedaling up steep mountains, my chatty nature on pause as I endeavor merely to breathe, during a momentary protest, my boyfriend’s response was emblematic, ‘Pedal, just pedal!’ Sometimes it’s really that easy.
Merely remembering to pedal gets us from here to there….it’s that simple, from where we are to where we want to be.
Before you know it, damn if you’re not UP THAT HILL admiring the vista! Happy pedaling!
BB Webb