What's In a Decade?
Covid contemplations... and 49% off my eCourse
I began my 40s with some seismic life changes – I got remarried, left a job, and started my business. It has been a decade of creativity, hard work, doubt, perseverance, parenting, community, isolation and connection, tragedy, pandemic, illness, healing, beginnings and endings, surprises, output, and faith. So much faith.
The things that are the same: My family – my spouse, my two biological children, and my "bonus" children (and a grandchild!) are the heart of my life. I keep trying new things and allowing myself and my work to change, even when it's scary. New opportunities continue to come, and I remain ever tickled when they do. There are things I'm not great at and I continue to try to course correct these. I stare out the window when I'm thinking. I'm entirely still a coach at heart, someone who loves holding space for others, listening, and prompting new ways of seeing ourselves and our work, be it writing or not.
Things that are different: How much grey hair I have and oh so much other evidence of aging. Becoming a bat mitzvah and finding a very special way to contribute to my Jewish community locally. I find myself more and more drawn towards "making" without necessarily much idea of how or what. Embarking on a certification training without knowing where it will lead. I've learned a LOT about boundaries. I still get tangled up with perfectionism but can usually see it pretty quickly, ditto fear and scarcity. Our kids range from 17 to 28 - blink! I've had a few really awful lessons with folks over this decade, each of which taught me something important about myself and life and not overriding my instincts. I've also had the absolute blessing of connecting with so many extraordinarily kind, thoughtful, passionate, creative, generous, fabulous people.
Something about having Covid, particularly during Yom Kippur – the day it is said we practice our own deaths – has brought an extra layer of contemplation to my already contemplative existence. Maybe that's why I am musing about this here.
None of us is a one-hit wonder, not even the one-hit wonders. Every writer and artist I know has periods of between-ness, after one project – be it a book release, an album, a show – or even some period that remained unseen by the world, a particular season in one's creative life.
I have that sense that I'm in a between season again. I am holding this with curiosity, knowing that there is also continuity in the way change unfolds. Some things – see above – stay the same, even as they, too, are always evolving. Others fall away completely, but not always in big dramatic ways. Sometimes the changes are more subtle, and it's only in looking back that you can see that you are no longer who you were.
So, I turn 50 in January. I don't have a big plan for counting down, though I am open to inspiration! For now, I am simply grateful to be here, in this body, in this room, sitting masked in a pink chair while my spouse works on their honors thesis, recovering from a virus that has taken so much from us individually and collectively, in a world that is as battered as it is beautiful.
I received this lovely text out of the blue today from someone who has worked with me on and off throughout this decade. Her words came as such a timely and welcome reminder that these writing practices WORK, and why offering what I do remains constant even as it's ever-changing.
To share my gratitude at where I find myself in these last months of a decade, I'm offering a 49% discount on Getting Words on the Page, my evergreen eCourse. This discount is good for the first 49 people who claim it!
The coupon code is GRATITUDE49.
If you want to bring practices into your life that might open the door to writing you know is "in there," more self-discovery, and perhaps most of all, more creative ease, I hope you'll enroll as a gift to yourself. It’s asynchronous, so you can move through all of the lessons at your own pace.
Please feel free to share this post with anyone in your world who wishes they were writing more freely and consistently.
And to everyone who has sent me a note with healing wishes: Thank you! These have really helped. I tested negative tonight and am feeling considerably better after a rough week.
A decade? A decade.