“In his book On Trails: An Exploration, Robert Moor writes, ‘In the end, we are all existential pathfinders: We select among the paths life affords, and then, when those paths no longer work for us, we edit them and innovate as necessary. The tricky part is that while we are editing our trails, our trails are also editing us.’ The choices we make, make us. We get to edit our paths, innovate them. We get to choose the story we tell about our lives—and the paths we choose, the story we tell, changes us too.”
Here I am again, at another crossroads in life. My company announced its’ “wind down” last week and I am not sure if I will have this job for a week or a year still. I am back in a “comfortable” place I have been frequently the last 11 years after I left the “safety” of GE and excited about what is to come. It is the first time in a while I’ve had a “normal” transition out of a job, vs. ending a consulting engagement where you really aren’t part of the company and its nice to be with friends going through the same transition. NEC has been the best team I ever worked with.
When I started trail running last year, I saw the movie “A Star is Born”, which broke my heart thinking about my friend Gunter, and listened over and over to the song “shallow” which talks about diving into the deep end and never meeting the ground. I felt like that all last year – being afraid…committing to something I didn’t fully appreciate or know how to do. I had set a goal, the Killington Ultra, having never done anything like it and just determined to trust my coach and try. Finish or leave my body on the mountain – and this doesn’t mean failure, it meant doing my very best and not giving up ever. Through all of last year, I found new friends, a love of trail running and the fun of problem solving myself.
I found the introductory paragraph and the following in a running blog:
The author talks about finding someone with the “…spirit of approfondement—if I may borrow that marvelous French word that translates roughly as ‘playing easily in the deep.'”
You follow your heart, be happy about what you have, who you have in your life, and grow forward. Learn to be good being in uncomfortable situation – it is something I hire for now.
Today was a beautiful, cool sunny day and I did my Sunday run on some new trails at Beaver Brook. It was spectacularly beautiful. As I think about updating my resume, I realize I need to rethink this as I am not the same person I was four years ago – better I think, I hope and definitely changed. And not afraid at all to go deep.
Move Forward Without Fear 