Look at every path closely and deliberately, then ask ourselves this crucial question: Does this path have a heart? If it does, then the path is good. If it doesn’t, it is of no use.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/path_3.html#EcpscD2Z6YXMoRRG.99Look at every path closely and deliberately, then ask ourselves this crucial question: Does this path have a heart? If it does, then the path is good. If it doesn’t, it is of no use.
~ Carlos Castaneda
It’s funny…I hated my day job, I prayed for a way out, and I had been pining for more work time with the hubby…and I had been praying for new ways to bring in other sources of income so that I can work on more art and make money with my own hands.
I sort of thought, in all of that pining and praying and fervently hoping, that I would have some alternative worked out BEFORE I left the hated job.
Well.
So I don’t always get to choose the timing or the details or the exact path of how prayers are answered, or so I’m learning. I did not get a new job lined up, I did not make sure I had plenty of savings at the ready, I did not have a whole bunch of multiple streams of income all neatly lined up.
Nope, I sure didn’t. My prayers got answered with a big old fashioned kick in the butt as I lost my grip on the slippery rock of seeming safety.
I have been through this before. When we opened our business consulting firm 6 years ago, I fought to keep a hold on that rock. I was so afraid to let go and flow with the river. I was afraid of the unknown, even though I hated the work that had me “trapped” in the known.
While I have since moved away from so much business consulting as the economics of small businesses have changed these past couple of years, I loved my work and my rules and my customers and my way of being able to sink or swim on our terms.
Then I got foolish and took another “Joe Job”. And in the short time I was working it, I got complacent and liked the feel of the rock under my strained fingers. I lost sight of my priorities and how I wanted to create my life and how good it used to feel when I felt good about the work I did everyday.
Then comes my answered prayers. I lost my job. Before I was ready, or not exactly on my terms and on my timetable and when I was all neat and tidy and “ready”.
And guess what?? I’m living through it! It seems that I can earn money and art at the same time! It’s a bit different than what I imagined, and is not the total sum of what I want to do in paying art time, but it so totally works!
Christopher and I have been painting the walls in people’s homes…faux painting, which is just an enormous art journal background! And re-finishing cabinets and designing murals and playing in color and going to Home Depot…it’s what I love to do, just on a much larger scale than my art journals. Of course, not so many rub-ons or markers 🙂 But I get to hang out with Christopher and listen to music and wax rhapsodic and paint and make something that looks beautiful and brings joy!
I am still fighting the fear a bit, it’s certainly uncomfortable still, but I have faith that we are moving in the right direction, and I feel so inspired when I come home from a day of painting! And I have time to art more and get back to so many projects that were falling by the wayside…Now it’s just a matter of scheduling enough jobs to keep the lights on and the art supplies coming!!
xoxo