Transitions: A smoother consistency of yellow

Look at the bottom of this canoe. Sometimes it got too close to the rocks just under the water. Sometimes it got dragged up on the beach too roughly. It was green. Then white. For a while it was a bright Indian red, the name of a type of red in watercolour paint. It has been places. On journeys. Probably just short journeys but who knows. We can tell it has been around for a while. I saw it on the beach at Southey Point and the collage of colours and scraping reminded me first of what Michela Sorrentino had said about her paintings when I was interviewing her and then about how an observer would never know the places that this canoe had been from looking at it. All we can do is surmise.

It's a bit like meeting people as they grow older.  Layer upon layer. Incidents. Emotion. Sadness. Memories. Layer upon layer as if every year and each new meeting introduces a stranger to ourselves.

The other night I was talking to a friend. She said, "I think I"m in a transition. I don't know what to do next." Welcome to the cusp of 50, I thought. I thought moving to Salt Spring was my transition and it was I suppose. But now I realize that the moving here was really just the easiest step. It represented wanting to create a life that was more flexible and allowed my creativity to be at the forefront. What I didn't anticipate is that there's no such thing as just one step in a transition. The first part of my transition seemed like the easiest transition I've ever made. Now, coming up to the finale of the second year I've simply stepped closer to a whole bunch of new questions and wondering what the next step is and how I"m going to push through the colours that have been created in the past two years to move to a smoother consistency of yellow?

Personal Progress, Plateaus and Illusions

On a walk one day, heading back from Vesuvius Bay, I thought it was so cool that it looked as if this ladder was perched for me to quickly climb to the top of Mount Maxwell and step gingerly off onto the moss that would surely greet my first step upon arrival on its flat top. Illusion.

I've been reading The Artist's Way and doing my morning papers faithfully. I have a lot of questions right now that have to do with feeling like perhaps I've reached another plateau.

It's so easy to forget where we've come from and too often, in my case, failed to properly acknowledge. When we have achieved something, too often, if you're like me, you forget all about where you were before you accomplished the last bunch of stuff you did and soon, at a plateau, you're looking around feeling stuck without taking the time to acknowledge so much of what has happened to move you to the place you're now at.

This book, The Artist's Way, has made me recognize that and made me think that the reason I'm now feeling the way I am - a little bewildered as to my next move - it's because I have failed to properly acknowledge that goals, once accomplished, even in the airy, fairy way that I even have goals, call for new desires to be unearthed and if it's the right time, accomplished. That is what leads to new experiences. If that isn't happening, it's time to question why you are standing still and what can be done to keep moving forward. I think that's what I've been thinking about lately.

For example, I never imagined years ago, when I used to come to Salt Spring Island as a tourist that I would ever a) live here or b) be one of those people who sold stuff at the market. But I am and I did. That was last year. In the past it would have seemed like a ridiculous notion, now accomplished. Whoa. When I put it that way, that's cool!

When it comes to the market last year didn't require a lot of thought. I matted my photos. I made my photo cards. I sold them. I talked to a lot of people. I heard people's responses to my images.  This year that's not good enough.  I need a new product I say. What can I do differently with my photos? How can I present them in a way that is unique? Is there a more interesting technique to set them apart? The bar has been raised. And, I know, from my own past experience and from being around other creative types that asking those questions is a never ending path.

Lately, I've been asking if living here is the right place at this point in my life. I'm not so sure it is. I love it here. It's beautiful. I have made some very dear friends who I would miss immensely but is it really the right time for me to be living here now that I know what "the dream" of living on a Gulf Island is like. And, I know the challenges. I have to ask myself, again, what do you really want your life to be like on a daily basis. If a lack of money is the only thing you are lacking is that big enough to move or does it just mean I have to try harder to bring it into my life here?

I need to try harder to financially make it work and would all it take is for me to believe, wholeheartedly, that that is all it would take - trying harder - or is that not a realistic assessment of how challenging it truly is to make a living here?

But, I"m supposed to be a writer says my inner voice. You can make a living from anywhere they say. Theoretically, I know that's true. It has not yet been true for me to the degree I need it to be true. What's preventing that from happening wholeheartedly I wonder?

When I said to my friend Karin that maybe I'm not supposed to do this or I would have been more successful by now, she just looked at me and said, "It's hard. Who said it was going to be easy?" I hate it when she zeros in on a life truth so succinctly.

Not that you asked, but this is what I've been thinking about too much lately and wondering how to move forward.

What do you do when you feel you've reached a plateau and need to get to the next phase of your journey?

The Stairways to Transition (Aren't Perfect)

In a continuation of yesterday's topic, how strange that I should write the blogpost The Art of Reinventing Yourself only to then interview (on the same day) a woman who has hosted a transition circle for mid-life women and is interested in launching one here on Salt Spring. Her name is Francine Z. Carlin.

She has a public relations and communications education and background and is from the U.S. She has worked in Washington, D.C. with national unions there as their spokesperson to name just one type of work she's been involved with.

More importantly, she's done a lot of other personal development work (conflict resolution, group dynamics, work focused on soul) that she incorporates into the work she now does with family run businesses.

After I interviewed her, I realized that there was something very important that I'd left off yesterday's list (well, actually, I'm sure there are many more than that) but I forgot to add:

Make it a priority to create an amazing support network around yourself of people who unconditionally support whatever you choose because they have faith in your wisdom and your abilities based on their experience of you and that's good enough for them to offer unconditional support.

When I was in Vancouver in the last year or two I felt that I had done this. I very consciously let go of anyone who was not supportive of me or who I didn't feel had faith in me.

It's amazing what you end up with when you do that. You end up with the most amazing circle of people who even if they don't necessarily understand your choices or even agree with them will, because of their faith in you as an individual, go with it and be supportive. I have that - in Vancouver - and now I need to create it here as well.

That understanding was life changing for me. When you grow up in a family environment that's highly critical, you don't necessarily understand that it's a way of being you can choose to have nothing to do with.

Recognizing that you can choose who you let in and who you consciously choose to let go of is very freeing.

The thing about this "transition group" that she's interested in bringing together is that there is such a lack of sacred space to speak about things that affect us at a deep level and the time to look at how we're living intentionally, rather than just moving from morning to evening, over and over without any personal reflection on how we want to be living and how to take the steps to make change.

Intentionally taking the time to focus on how you're living in comparison to how you want to be living is the first step to begin to make change.

As Francine said yesterday, "Life's too short to talk about the weather".