Ikigai

"What gets you up in the morning?" It's the question I'm tasking myself, and my treasured friends in Book Club, to answer at the dawn of this new year.  Our Book Club, we discovered after doing a little research through our electronic libraries, has been in existence for nearly ten years!  Time flies when you're discussing good books with great people.  Over the years we've reserved our January meeting for an art project.  With the craziness of the holidays, it's hard to find time to read in December, so we use our time at the beginning of the year to contemplate all that we want to be different in our lives in the new year and express those wishes through art.  Intentions, a single descriptive word, and resolutions are documented and interpreted in vision boards, journals or flags.  I can't wait to see how my pals express what propels them to rub the sleep from their eyes, pull back the covers and rise to greet the day.

After seven years in the same role at my office, I am making a fresh start in a brand new position.  Ironically, it was the pandemic and associated lockdown that begged me relentlessly to disrupt myself.  While eternally grateful to remain employed in such dire economic times which have robbed so many of so much, when stripped of all those activities that make up what really matters in life, I became acutely aware that the passion and joy I derived from work had somehow slipped away, too.  The environment had changed around me, and I realize now I spent way too much time hoping each change would yield new energy.  It was the gift of a leadership coach who helped me believe I was empowered to make the change I wanted to see.  I just needed to be brave enough to ask for it.

 

And so in the anomalous year that 2020 showed herself be, I stirred an already turbulent pot.  I searched for a new job and got married.  I established a home yoga practice outside of my beloved hot room, religiously took a daily walk, and began on-line art classes where I continued to hone drawing skills, learned how to paint with watercolors and became part of a Facebook drawing community whose members faithfully and generously supported each other as we courageously shared all our wonky attempts to learn something new.  I became a better cook, and baked quantities of Christmas cookies that could not possibly be consumed by the select few in our bubble.

And as I'm writing this I recall recently thinking that the best part of my day is waking up to see how my watercolor paintings have dried, signing my name and slicing a butter knife around the paper block to release them into the world.  

I would have to travel great distances in the way back machine to recall this much newness in such a short period of time in the chronicles of this old life of mine.  But that's the thing, right?  Who among us wasn't having a hard time at some point in the last year mustering up the energy to face each new day with the joy and appreciation it deserves?  We are forced to disrupt ourselves in order to thrive. As I look back on a truly extraordinary year, I see now that every new thing I have created in the last 300 days was done so out of necessity.  How else was I going to get up in the morning?