Careful What You Ask For

The beautiful, albeit incredibly scary, thing about this experiment of mine is that I really have to trust my gut. It told me, even as early as two years ago, the job had to go and that I was meant for other things. I didn’t fully listen, however, because it wasn’t practical and I think that’s where I made a huge mistake.

I’m not denouncing practicality in any way. I’m a very practical person and anyone who spends a significant amount of time with me will quickly observe my grasp of pragmatism and how it serves me. But it is possible, as with just about anything, to go too far. So far, in fact; that I forgot to listen to my innate wisdom. I forgot to trust.

I have been learning to trust and what’s more, I have been learning to openly voice the life lesson of trust. I find it difficult to trust anything I can’t immediately deduce, control or understand with my five senses. But as I learn to open myself more and to live with a higher level of trust, solutions to problems and responses to my actions seem to arrive in their own time.

Where am I going with this? Good question.

Today I met with my spiritual director and told him the results of the 3 Days of Silence he posed to me. I elaborated on the time I spent reflecting on the talents, skills and strengths that naturally flow from me; and that the biggest conundrum I face is that I have many, many, many talents that, on paper, do not relate in any way. I mean, what the hell am I suppose to do with the fact that I’m eerily comfortable at the front of a room of 50 people, can analyze numbers and data to death, am organized to a fault, and have a creative streak that has mutated into a life of its own? In short, I’m as much right-brained as I am left-brained and I have no idea what to do with it.

My spiritual director apparently thinks I am a perfect candidate to help start a community center on the Northwest side of Chicago with the Northwest Neighborhood Federation; a group that recently received $200,000 from the state to establish such a resource. Their intention is to not only effectively use all of that scratch in eight months, but to use it towards programs such as ESL, GED, community schooling, political activism, the arts and issues of community concern for the Latino and Polish populations of the Northwest Side.

It’s all very preliminary right now and to tell the truth, this priest received word of this only hours before we met – it all just came together. But it’s a dream he has had for years and it sounds like the kind of area I am interested in, and I just happened to leave my job for such an opportunity, and I just happened to be meeting with him regularly after just happening to be going to a certain Mass…. You see where I am going with this.

It seems Steve Jobs was right. “You can’t connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backward.” I am trying not to focus on this too much because I do not want my hopes to get too out of control and I want to enjoy this upcoming vacation as much as possible and take one day at a time.

But hot damn this would be freggin’ awesome to tackle!

I’m off on vacation for the next few weeks in the Pacific Northwest. (I never understood that label because it’s not like there is an Atlantic Northwest that everyone is dying to get to, is there?) Nonetheless, there’s nothing like being unemployed and taking off for a while, eh? I will do my best to keep things up to date here but will probably only manage to jot some notes and drafts to round out later. I hope to have some good stuff for you. This whole “explore life” thing is pretty nifty. If you have the means, I highly recommend it.