2021 has been an interesting year so far, at times full of frustration, and at other times full of hope and possibilities.  It was dealing with grief and loss, not just human, but of freedom as well.  A time of change, some planned, some anything but planned and while there were also amazing blessings along the way, I knew that my well had run dry.  

Some may refer to this as the need to fill their bucket or fill up their gas tank. Constant work had become a lifestyle, something to “brag” about, to try to impress people with my productivity.  I’m used to working hard and committing to what I’m working on; I blame my band director, who insisted we be at every rehearsal on time, stay as late as it took and push through things like pain, lack of sleep, sunburn, and even sickness to get the job done.  I don’t mean to sound like this was a bad thing really, as we played as hard as we worked, and I learned a lot of life lessons from this which have served me well.  But in the last ten years or so of my life, busyness has taken its toll, even though I know better.

This year and a half has been a roller coaster, with many ups and downs.  New jobs and responsibilities and a lot of work that I committed to.  So much work that I have found myself working on my computer up to 13-14 hours per day and then working on weekends as well.  On top of trying to keep up with the house as I had time and schedule the occasional time with family and friends.  After all, this wasn’t hard work.  It wasn’t like I was doing any heavy lifting or manual labor.  And I had work.  Some people I knew didn’t have work.  I had no worries about money or where I was going to live or if I had food to eat.  No, life was great, except all I was doing was working for others.

So it was no surprise when this past spring I found myself sinking into that familiar dark hole, getting up every morning, smiling through work and going home to work.  A planned vacation in the late spring did little to alleviate the work as I was still doing more output than input.  The idea of “running away to find myself” kept creeping in my head, despite it sounding like a 60’s cliché.  I kept thinking of my parent’s and grandparent’s generations and thinking what a weeny butt I was.  So I kept working.  I took four days to get away on my own, did a zoom meeting, checked membership and emails every day and worked because I felt guilty if I didn’t.  I took a short vacation with my husband promising myself I wouldn’t work.  Oh well.  All that output and very little input. 

Until this week.  I did the unthinkable.  I cleared out two days to attend a leadership summit by myself where I couldn’t work on anything else.  I felt guilty just thinking about it, but in a fit of craziness, I actually paid money to attend this summit and the guilt of wasting the money was larger than the guilt of taking a couple of days away from work. So, for twelve hours I did nothing but sit and learn about something I wanted to learn about. Twelve hours of listening, taking notes and applying.  To everything.  Application to myself, to my school work, to my association work.  The creativity flowed, the ideas flourished, the excitement grew.  My head cleared for the first time in a long time, I was able to remember an entire statement and write it down without looking at it 100 times.  Input.  Lots and lots of input. It only took twelve hours of intentional, focused input to begin some rejuvenation in my mind and soul.  

I have a friend who has worked with me on my strengths who reminds me that I’m a learner and that I need time to think.  You might think this would not be that big a deal, but anytime you work against your strengths it has to make a difference in how you function as a person.  I have been working against my strengths for a long time now and I shouldn’t be at all surprised that my mind and body are rebelling. 

There were some major takeaways from those twelve hours that sound easy but will take some major changes in my life.  It’s easy to talk balance, it’s hard to make it happen.  It’s all about making space in my life.  The best analogy was about building a fire.  Even if you layer all the right materials to build a fire, if you don’t leave space between the materials, it won’t be able to breath enough to allow the fire to start.  That time to breathe is not just for recuperating, but also for reflection to get those creative fires burning.  As a leader, it’s not only my job to work hard alongside others, but to model healthy behaviors as well.  

So now the hard part – application.  Sitting down to set up boundaries and finding more opportunities for input to balance the output.  I need to purposefully set up time for play and creativity, doing these things every bit as hard and with as much commitment as I do the work.  We were told that when we identify changes, that we change, and it moves us to action.  Here’s to hoping that I can identify all the changes that need to be made, begin to provide myself with more input and find my groove.