New Blog Home, New Opportunities

This year has been an incredible journey and I really wish I had taken more time to blog about all that has been going in my life, but it all just seemed to fly by so fast! One of the biggest and most life changing experiences I had this year was my trip to Peru for a 10-day Shamanic Dieta in the Amazon jungle back in the beginning of summer. My experiences in the jungle have changed me in ways I’m only starting to understand. I’m so much calmer, and I’m more in-tuned with myself and how I’m feeling from one moment to the next. It used to be that things would bother me and I’d have no real idea about what exactly it was that was making me feel differently from one moment to the next. That is no longer true, mostly. Those experiences in the Amazon have also made politics take a second seat to just living. I still pay attention of course, but I’m no longer so emotionally involved. It all just feels like one big drama and I truly feel that trying to change peoples minds and hearts about anything political does not work. We’re all too wrapped up in our own echo-chambers and have highly evolved algorithms feeding us daily confirmation bias for there to be anything real. I’ve come to the personal conclusion that the real way to change things is to step out of it all and work to understand and find commonality with everyone as a person, regardless of their political viewpoint. Only then can we come back to center and stop the madness.

I was out walking with my wife and our dog, Winston, a few weeks ago and I said to my wife that I had this overwhelming feeling that something big was coming. A change big enough that it’s going to start a new pathway in my life. I’ve been around for 40 years and have lived many distinct lives in this life. I can feel the shifts. I can look back at a specific time period and recognize a different life and a different version of me living it. These lives are delimited by changes that were so huge they forced me to grow in drastic ways. Typically I don’t know a new life is coming, I just suddenly turn around one day and realize that I’ve been living one for a year or so. That day I told my wife that I could feel a change coming, big enough to be a delimiter, and even though I KNOW that level of change always seems to start with some sort of devastation, I was ready and excited for it. I could feel the sense of adventure welling up in my heart and I really feel like I’m just ready for it.

Then last Friday, the company where I have worked for the last 3+ years closed its doors and everyone was laid off. Devastation. It was all so unexpected. Last we heard they had enough funding to get to the end of the year and they were actively looking for new investors. When I jumped off that meeting I sat in stillness for a few minutes. Was this the beginning of the change? Breathe. Breathe. Trust. It will all be fine. My income accounts for about 65% of our household income so the loss of my job was no small shock. It’s big. I tried to assess what I was feeling. It was a mixed bag of emotions for sure. On one hand I was really sad about the whole thing because I truly love and believe in the Proscape product and I can’t imagine something with such potential could just disappear. I also really enjoy working with a few of the people at the company and would really miss them. But what else was I feeling? Yes there was fear, the fear of the unknown, the fear of not finding a home with a company and a product I felt passionate for. What else? Positive and relentless adventure! I could feel it coursing through my veins. That thing that has always driven me and only gets stronger whenever there is a threat to my security. It’s like a switch. The moment things get really shaking in my life it flips and everything else falls away and all that is left is focus. Within 15 minutes I already had a complete list of prioritized tasks all lined up in my mind and seconds later they were typed up in front of me. It’s quite a gift, whatever this “thing” is. I saw a therapist many years ago who told me I had some amazing coping mechanisms. I’m guessing that’s what this is…my coping mechanism. A culmination of years of survival.

Tomorrow will be one week since I was officially laid off and it has been a whirlwind. I’ve been really blessed and have had a couple people dropped into my lap who have helped me tremendously in my search for a new home. I have a couple job leads that have me unbelievably excited working for companies I knew nothing about until this week. One of those companies is Automattic and this company is the whole reason I switched from Blogger to WordPress.com for my blog. I’ve been reading up on the CEO, Matt Mullenweg, and really admire and respect him. He’s managed to build a 100% work from wherever company that currently employs over 500 employees in 51 countries. His philosophy and the Creed of Automattic is such a perfect fit for my values it almost feels like I wrote them. I’m keeping my fingers crossed and allowing the journey to unfold. Who knows where it is I will end up, but I’m along for the ride and working wherever I can every step of the way.