The cues about what my life would be today should not have been a mystery to me, but as I launch Buoyblog there’s no land in sight. Seems natural for my career to have brought me to the sound side of the ocean, and a syncopated rhythm to my day. Living in NYC (again), writing, consulting and canines with a self-directed cadence of daily choices about what is most important to me. Sounds liberating. Looks tranquil. Yet. Being left alone with my seasoned Type A approach proved brutal. Breaking nearly three decades of nonprofit goal addiction and replacing it with a relentless head rant took time. As destructive as it sounds, I did a good job of creating that mind game. I am nothing if not tenacious. But my “it’s all up to you now” mantra started sounding a little less inspired each morning. A daily mental selfie with diminishing returns. If I didn’t start the walk toward my keyboard early in the day, I was toast.
Arriving at the place in your life when you get what you have long wanted is tricky. It feels different when it is THE THING. Not a side bar, not a stolen weekend hour or two, but THE THING.
And when that head rant didn’t stalk me, its tag team accomplice, Netflix did. Or my two wheatens. I felt stalled, with little experience in how my newly acquired freedom might distract me from what I thought I most wanted to do. Write. at the place in your life when you get what you have long wanted is tricky. It feels different when it is THE THING. Not a side bar, not a stolen weekend hour or two, but THE THING.
I finally had to strike-thru every inspired idea on my journal list, and find a neutral starting point. But not without first letting go of my guilt about the career freedom my husband of 35 years had given me. And not without self-imposed disdain for my effortless ability to squander that which was most precious. Time. To. Write.Somehow, I am beyond that now. Not unlike Tom Hanks and Wilson. I have made it over that final breaking wave that denied my view and blocked my water trek.There it is. Open water. Hello buoy friend.Buoyblog is about swimming toward open. Stroke upon stroke toward the unknown, the difficult questions—toward the call of my Creator to sail solo. Get out of my head, think out loud and share my voice, all to grow my faith and witness to others. Swim away from self-absorbed shores. And share my buoy.
My life has been rooted in the heart of God from a very young age. I am pretty thankful for that. But I have always been a seeker, challenging how to buoy my Christian faith in God’s biggest swells. Big, bad, raging swells.
A buoy helps sea travelers navigate challenging waters. It is designed to rock with movement, changing conditions, and low visibility. It is most visible when it rises.
The truth is, faith that rocks requires a swell.
Join me in open water.
I love the Toast bit. ‘Hurry up and make a masterpiece’; ‘writing is what I do’. I had plenty of me time recently and can totally identify with the noisy headspace and the path that ends up producing material. I love the ocean as a metaphor for Gods vastness. Somewhere within the construct He actually affords is quite a bit of time to do what we want. A lot of different seascapes to chip away our tendency to fall off center. Thank you for sharing, Kathryn.