I've been fielding lots of questions from you since my last post, in which I shared a little bit about how I've been approaching my time off. Two questions, by far, rise to the top, no matter who I'm talking to: (a) how do you know when to leave a job? (b) how are you feeling? Both can be intensely personal and unique to each person's context and circumstances, yet what's been universal is that there's a sense of curiosity for something that we all long for at one time or another, hoping to get a glimpse of what it's like to have committed to a decision and living through it. I've also been hearing from many of you who've taken time off in between work, with tons of sage advice and anecdotes that are becoming a relational (vs. institutional) structure to my day-to-day. But for now, I'm going to put a pin on the first question. It's a meaty one and I'd like to give it a bit more time and collect my thoughts.
When people ask me how I'm feeling, it comes from a place of care but also curiosity. They genuinely want to know how I'm doing, but they're also doing that thing, a.k.a. "asking for a friend." Listen, there's no shame in this. In fact, I welcome and encourage it. In order for us to be able to make certain choices in our lives, we need to be able to imagine what that might be like. Imagination often taps into our memories and the past, but if you're trying to do something you've never done before and there are no existing source materials in your own "data" set, you need to gather it from other people's stories and give your mind something to work with.
I'd describe my current state of mind as a "renewal" of sort. Here are a few things I'm noticing so that you can get a sense of what renewal "feels" like:
I can dive into a deep state of focus much more quickly. Any time I sit down to read or listen to something, or even getting into conversations with someone, I am finding that I can go from point A (before the task, book, podcast, conversation) to B (being in the activities and stories) much faster. I guess it's akin to your body needing a beat to adjust to different temperatures when you first jump in cold water, but now that reaction and calibration time is much quicker for me. When I'm in it, I'm in it. Another way to describe it is that I can be present in whatever the task or interaction at hand much more fully and on demand, whereas before, it would take me a few repeated attempts, or at best, in a distracted state.
At the same time, my capacity to jump from one topic to another has increased. While being deeply focused in one topic is great, my natural disposition is to hold space to many different tasks and topics at once (see: reading multiple books at the same time). And I've found that my appetite for this type of learning and "intake" of information has increased. I'm constantly on the hunt for something new to learn about, from Sashiko, a Japanese mending technique that makes the most of patterns, fabrics, and designs in repair; the philosophy of silence and aspiration; data architecture for secondhand goods; history of paper making; and more. Most of the time, the exploration begins randomly, from something I've been meaning to look into, or something I've recently stumbled upon, and the most exciting part is that one subject often has nothing to do with another until, out of nowhere, a pattern emerges. That's a special kind of "big brain" feeling which is rather addictive.
Bonus: I've started to dream new dreams. I've always been a big dreamer, in the sense of dreaming dreams that feel like real life, in full color, sound and motion, recurring dreams, and even at times, lucid dreaming. A couple of weeks ago, I noticed that most of my latest dreams are ones I've never encountered before — new people, scenes, and interactions. Whereas my previous dreams were in a way regurgitating situations and emotions that were already too familiar and played out, these new dreams involve entirely new things, nothing I've lived through in my life. Rather than processing something I've been holding onto, it feels like my brain is creating something new, and much quicker to take in new ideas into the plot. I'd imagine this is what it's like to have an improv partner with endless ideas and boundless energy.
Renewal, to me, feels like I'm readier than ever to learn, absorb, and create — not because I'm made to, but because I am savoring every bit for myself. No doubt there's scientific explanation for all of this. And I'm convinced that being present, here and now, is how I'm going to figure out what's next.