Who are you uninterrupted?

My dearest friend shared an Instagram post with me from Felecia Hatcher a couple of months ago that simply asked, "who are you uninterrupted?" This friend has a habit of sending these kinds of clips, advice, and questions at exactly the right moment.

I sat with that for minute after watching, but with anything, I was busy with life... parenting, work, activities and all the demands we deal with on the daily. However, over the next few days, it kept nagging me. A voice, loud and clear at random points through the day.... "Who are you uninterrupted?"

Loud and clear. Over and over. So I got a beautiful journal and I wrote on the first page...

"Who am I uninterrupted?"

It's been two months. The journal is blank.

Since then, I've walked away from a well paying, secure position with an organization I'd spent 15 years with. Just walked away. Done. I've spent countless hours contemplating, thinking, ruminating. I've written in a (different) journal every morning since, despite really hating journaling and never having been able to stick with it in the past. The journal is filled with daily musings, mostly nonsense, but a streaming consciousness of my scattered thoughts each morning. The questions from that video a couple months ago consistently nag me while I write...shaping my thoughts and teasing through the chaos that comes from dumping an identity over just a couple of weeks that I had spent 15 years building. 15 years of building that I never intended. I never meant to stay that long, and it was definitely never a conscious career goal. It was more like I was just floating, existing, and living through the cycle of the day to day. Accepting what opportunities came my way rather than building my own life. I talked about leaving to start my own business for years, but I always threw it out there as a pipe dream... something I would always talk about but nothing I would ever do in exchange for 6 weeks vacation, benefits and a decent pension. The familiar. The safe. The responsible.

Then one day... A full pivot. 180 degrees. I left my career with a rough idea of what I really wanted to do, my coach and my village cheering me on and these questions from Felecia's video:

• "If nothing stood in the way of me achieving my success, what would my life actually look like?"

• "If at every intersection of your life, the light isn't red, it's not yellow, it's only green, what would you build?"

• "What interrupted you to begin with?"
  

I've barely started the journal, but I carry it with me while I collect, dream and contemplate. They are big questions, but they're important questions, and when I start to sort out those answers, I want to make sure I have my journal ready to capture it.

Our path is never neat and tidy with signs pointing us in the right direction. Sometimes it's muddy and sometimes its all uphill and then sometimes its all downhill and sometimes there's a tree in the middle. Sometimes it goes in circles and other times it leads you to the water's edge and we have to swim for a bit. Asking the big questions allows us to trust ourselves that even though it may be difficult, or not what we expected, we're on the right path.