Begin

It’s amazing, really, this transformation that’s occurred over the last few weeks.  Just a few short weeks ago I had a job, a career, a path to follow.  Things dragged, and time seemed to slow to the virtual point of stopping for the longest time.  And then, in rapid fashion, everything came to an abrupt end.  I say “abrupt” because when it finally came, the end, it happened faster than I thought it would.  I knew it had been coming for some time, knew it would eventually happen, wanted it to happen, but still, it caught me somewhat unawares.  

Was I prepared?  Sure, on some levels.  Ok, a lot of levels.  It was something I had been thinking about for quite some time; years to be exact.  Looking back now, I can’t pinpoint the exact moment, but I’m sure there was a turning point. At some point along the way it became a life I no longer wanted to live.  Alright, truth be told, it was never really a life I wanted to live.  How amazing is it that I’ve identified myself through my jobs all these years, and never really by who I was?  I’ve always sought something, something intangible that I could never really see, or reach, but something nonetheless.  Apparently that was pretty transparent to others in my life…

I remember this one evening when I was living in Hilton Head.  I had just come home from work and my roommate was in the living room watching The Prince of Tides (good movie by the way, if you haven’t seen it), and was just about at the end.  I sat down to catch the last few minutes of it since I had never really seen the movie in its entirety. In the last scene, the sun is setting as Nick Nolte is heading home to his family; driving across this long winding bridge that spans this gorgeous marsh.  As the sun sets the marsh is aglow in hues of subdued oranges, reds, and yellows.  It’s quite an amazing moment.  For me, the scene reflects closure for the character.  The colors, subdued as they are, reflect a quieting of the fire that has raged inside him since he was a child, having never reconciled with what happened to him while growing up.  Throughout the entire movie his character recounts events that happened to him and his family when he and his siblings were children in hopes of helping his sister.  What transpires though, is his own healing.  He is forced to face his own demons and admit to himself what occurred was real, and that he must overcome them.  He takes a true journey into himself to discover his pain, and in return, learns to experience love.  And in this final scene he is driving home to his family, to begin his life anew.  The scene fades as he drives across the bridge into the setting sun.  As the movie finished and the credits began to roll, my roommate turned to me and caught the expression on my face, an expression I was unaware was present.  She paused in mid-turn and said, “Don’t worry.  You’ll find it.”  

Caught off guard, I asked, “Find what?”

She responded, “Your place.”

My place.  She could have meant a place for me to live, or she could have meant a place within my self.  Either way, she was right.  She nailed it on the head and I didn’t even have to say a word.  

I had been living in Hilton Head for a little over a year when this moment happened, and I think she knew I wasn’t happy there.  Hilton Head is great, don’t get me wrong.  It’s beautiful, and clean, and safe; everything many people are looking for in a place to live, but it wasn’t a place for me.  I didn’t know what I wanted; all I knew is that is wasn’t there, so a year later I moved to Savannah.

Savannah is a charming city, full of Southern culture and history.  I’ve lived here for the past four years and knew from the first day I was here that this isn’t my place either.  I’ve spent the better part of the last four years trying to determine where this place exists.  I’ve recounted my times in other cities I lived in, wondering if perhaps I had over looked something, I’ve researched various cities online, spoke with people from around the country and around the world, and talked with friends and family; all in hopes that I would discover this place.  Then I realized something awhile back.  It wasn’t where I was living that was the problem, but rather, me.

I hadn’t found my place within.  I had been so busy exploring everything around me, that I had overlooked one very important factor; myself.  Like Nick Nolte’s character, I had been blindly ignoring the obvious; the issues I had with my life and where I was were due largely in part to my own issues with myself.  I wasn’t able to define myself, to understand what it was about me that made me, me.  Don’t get me wrong, I had a healthy understanding about myself and what made me tick, but I hadn’t accepted large parts of who I was, who I am.  I realized this on the verge of my 26th birthday.

A few months before that birthday, I was pretty burnt out at work.  I had recently been promoted to GM of my company and was working from morning till night, changing company policies and procedures; overhauling everything.  There were many times where I would work 24 hours straight without even realizing it.  Then, at one particular low point, after coming off of one of my marathon work sessions, it hit me.  I was spending all my energy and time on my job, and none on myself.  I was just about to turn 26 and I realized I had wasted almost the entire year.

All my life I looked forward to turning 25.  For me, that was the age to be.  No longer were you a kid, yet you weren’t quite an adult.  It’s a nice middle-age; where you’re still young enough, yet old enough at the same time.  And here I was wasting it all on work.  For those of you who don’t know, I’ve pretty much been working my entire life in one way or another; from picking vegetables on a farm when I was 12, to having a paper route when I was a teen, to working in various grocery stores while in high school; all during which I participated in sports and attended honors classes in school.  And when I was younger, 25 seemed the age of freedom; freedom from being seen as a “kid”, and freedom from being seen as a “responsible adult”.  It was an age where you were allowed to experiment with your life, to take chances with no fear of retribution because, after all, you’re “in your twenties”, as if that statement alone validates whatever crazy things you do.

And here I was, about to turn 26 and I hadn’t done anything with my 25th year other than work.  I hadn’t experimented with my life, tried new things, and met new people, nothing.  All I had done was work.  Being that I thought I was missing a rite of passage, I decided to no longer waste any time.   I promptly began going out almost every night after work, living it up at various bars and clubs in Savannah’s famous downtown area.  I met a lot on *interesting* people, and had a lot of *interesting* experiences.  I was loose and free and casual with everything.  Many a time I came into work the next morning with my sunglasses firmly planted on my nose to block the annoying light from the overheads.  It was a great time, a fun time, and it promptly ended when I turned 26.

After months of partying and acting wild, I decided to quit it all.  I gave up drinking, the casual (but safe) sex, smoking, the one night stands, everything.  I settled into my job and threw myself at my work.  Because, while the previous months had been great, in a completely superficial way, they had produced more questions than answers; questions I wasn’t yet ready to answer.  

So for the past 3 years I deluged myself with work.  I threw myself into my job in hopes of avoiding the greater issues.  After all, work is a safe environment, there are no “what-ifs”, no “maybes”, only problems and solutions. And my job at the time was to find those solutions.  But somewhere along the way I began to lose myself to my career.  My identity was defined only by my actions at work.  My thoughts; thoughts of work.  My words; only conversations about work.  My entire existence became validated by only that which occurred at my company.  Along the way I lost relationships, friendships, my family, myself.  

Recently I hit rock bottom. There was a major upset in my company when it was sold and I was no longer the one responsible for it all. My time was no longer consumed by my responsibilities because my responsibilities became less and less as time went on. In an effort to fend off boredom with my free time, I began writing and rediscovered photography (two things I once had a passion for when I was younger).  They began innocently enough; merely hobbies to fill the void between my times working.  But something happened along the way.  I began discovering new things about myself and my life, things that had been hidden for years.

I slowly started down this path of self-discovery, and along the way met some amazing people and had some amazing experiences.  I began to explore the depths of myself and discovered latent characteristics I never knew existed.  I also discovered some interesting truths about myself and my views, not only on my own life, but the lives of those around me as well.  I soon discovered though, that this path was leading me further and further away from the career I had chosen, a career I never really wanted in the first place.  This path was leading away from familiar territory into regions unknown to me.

There were plenty of dark moments, when I sank into the darkness of insecurity and uncertainty.  It was in those times that I was confronted with some harsh realities of who I was and the life I was living.  In the past my normal course of action would have been to ignore such realizations and throw myself back in to my job, but I found myself unable.  People I knew, people who barely knew me, pushed me, encouraged me, and supported me during these times and I eventually began to push myself, to encourage myself, and finally, to support myself.  Slowly I became more comfortable with who I was and what I wanted out of my life.  Slowly I became surer of what it was I didn’t want, and began exploring the ideas of what it was I actually wanted.  Slowly I walked further down that path and away from my career.

For some, this progression may not seem like much.  But for me, I was walking away from the one thing I identified with, the one thing that I had allowed to define who I was.  This path I was on was leading me away from that, toward an unknown destination.  But I knew it was a journey I needed to take, and eventually I saw its destination; my resignation.  

My resignation was more than just me quitting my job, or changing careers.  It was a turning away from a life I had lived for years, a change in my outlook on life, a change in my attitude, a change in myself.  On faith, and nothing else, I walked away from my security and my comfort, and turned toward a new beginning; not knowing what lay before me.  

On faith, and nothing else, I’ve turned to myself; not knowing who I really am, and have begun to walk again.  I don’t know what lies before me, only which is already behind me; the life I once lived, the person I once was.  I am on a new journey of self-discovery, where I will no longer allow any one thing to define me, but rather, will allow myself and my life to define who I am.  

The path lies before me, untrodden and unknown.  

Let’s see where it leads, shall we?