…or how I lost my voice and what it took to find it again.
Sometimes, even when you know a change is coming, even when you secretly long for it, even when you tell yourself with all confidence that you are ready for it, maybe, just maybe, you aren’t! Not even a little bit.
Now before we go too far; no one actually died, no great illness befell anyone, no outwardly apparent tragedy happened at all. T’was merely that the job I had done for 20 years was suddenly no longer there to do. It was done, and I was free.
I had earnestly been looking forward to this time. A time of reinvention, a time to apply all of those great lessons learned to a new chapter, a time to write out the steps I would take to change the world, a time to apparently sit, staring at the blank page, willing the words to come, the language to flow, the muse to speak…hellooooo…no, like seriously yoo hoo….I had thoughts, I had dreams, I was going to change the world I just needed the time to get to it! Now I had the time, so where were the words? What should I talk about, who was my audience, who needed what I had to offer…and, you guessed it, I didn’t know the answer or worse, maybe the answer was that no one needed it.
Wait, what?!?
For years I had been the quintessential “get s**t done girl. If I didn’t know the answers I found them. If there wasn’t a plan, I wrote one and now I was struggling to plan my way out of a simple piece of prose for goodness sake. I went from sleeping like a log no matter how stressful the deadlines were to waking up every single night.
The wee hours and I had never been properly introduced, but here we were getting to know each other like secrets lovers. Quiet stolen moments of predawn dark where it was just the two of us staring into each others eyes for hours. 3AM is a shitty lover by the way, she leaves you with this kind of punch drunk attitude, nasty bags under your eyes and zero satisfaction. Yet there I lay with her while a million things I should have done at any point in the past to change the course I was on now ran through my brain.
Had I made a MISTAKE?! No, I knew I hadn’t, but still, that nagging little voice at the back of my brain kept asking the question.
And then someone asked if I could help a friend of theirs with a new business idea. They were struggling and could I just make a few minutes. Well, of course I could, it’s not like I’d figured out what I was going to do or anything, I could make time for a coffee. Their questions were straight forward. They were stuck at a point where their ideas were ready to take flight but they didn’t know how to make the next move. Over two cups of coffee and a cookie we discussed next steps, who could help them, how to find the money they needed and how to get their ideas written out in ways that would help others fully understand what they had to offer. They got excited, I got excited, could we meet again, could I help write some of the material needed, how would they pay me?
Wait, what?!?
Pay me? Pay me! I was having more fun in that hour than I had in the last few months and they wanted to know how they could get more and how to pay me! And in that moment I became unstuck. I was still the quintessential “get s**t done girl. If I didn’t know the answers I could find them. If there wasn’t a plan, I would write one. For them, for me and for anyone else struggling to find their next step!
I had found my voice again and I was ready to use it.
Sometimes the simple act of doing something, anything, is all you need. Go for coffee and tell someone your idea out loud, don’t be afraid! Ask for help, someone will help you. Staying stuck wondering what will happen is a terrible feeling. Be brave, be bold and dare yourself to find your voice and in doing so, maybe you too can take flight.