Songline 2

I'm happy that the work I do now takes up so little time in my life. I'm happy that I genuinely like all my clients, connect meaningfully with my collaborators, and am trusted. I'm happy that I feel free, can decide how my days and nights are allocated, and that my work is satisfying and has meaning.

I stopped feeling this way when I ran an agency. I worried I might never feel this way again. 

There was a part of me that used to feel guilty about leaving, when I left, and the repercussions of my departure. Mostly, though, I felt guilty about seeming like the kind of person who couldn't stick it out, put in the 10 years or whatever it takes to ensure a buyout so I could cash a big check in exchange for all my efforts, like Real Founders do.

But founding something isn't really about money. It's about creation. We created jobs, opportunities, and different ways of thinking about work life and how gaming could look. We created new and different kinds of conversations in a pretty hermetic space, and contributed to richer values. We designed an international agency whose language was mostly English in a country where that's pretty rare. 

It mattered at the time and the ripples still do. But like Brigitte singing the world into being in one person's rendition of an Irish origin story, once the making was done I had to leave. It had nothing to do with money and everything to do what my body already knew.

I'm happy. I'm happy with my long horizons of time, and happy that I can prioritise deep-cleaning my shower drain, or relish in the discovery that scum and mould slide off with just a bit of vinegar and scrubbing. I didn't know these things before. I didn't know how good I would feel pulling whole hanks of my own hair out of a drain hole, right after a meeting. I didn't know how much I missed owning my time without judgment—watching Mad Men until 4am while reading the reviews in between, then sliding, exhausted and full of stories, into the clean sheets I chose myself, before waking at midday like a college student.

I do not feel like a hostage to my life.

My home is mine, even if the title is not. It's mine because we care about each other.

My life is mine, and I can decide whom I share it with at every moment of every day. I don't feel afraid of turning down "opportunities" anymore, because if it doesn't feel like a "hell yes" then it's definitely a no. There are always others. This world is full and fat.

Tonight, after two years of intense depth psychology, ritual and archetype study, I'll be initiated a priestess. I'm also happy for this—for the long spiral path I traversed, and the fact that I don't particularly care who knows I'm into witchcraft or animism, or how they feel about it. I am alive in a universe that is also alive, a universe more interested in collaboration and creativity than in ensuring one race of beings wins the life race. 

There is no race. We are here and then we die. All any of us wants is to find the most harmonious ways to express our natures. Sometimes we enter into conflict as a result. Conflict is interesting. It creates new cosmos. But that doesn't mean I have to engage in conflicts that don't matter to me. I don't have to engage in anything I don't want to. 

When I exhale, trees inhale. It is enough. Everything else is bonus. It's play.