How did I End up Here?
The path I am on has not changed, but I did not expect to end up here. This is, however, an unexpected good situation.
While on more than one occasion I have found myself at a crossroads in regards to my life and direction, this is different. It’s not a crossroads, nor a path, but an unexpected destination.
And I am trying to wrap my head around how I managed to end up here.
For the past 10 months, I have been actively working on consciously creating my reality. I’ve been writing full time and working on developing and growing my audience. Recently, my focus shifted to developing my brand, which will help me with marketing and overall growth.
Unfortunately, this has not been as conducive as desired towards paying the bills. My wife and I had an agreement in regard to my continuing with this work and additionally needing a more traditional job to pay the bills.
I applied for a job and got a call on my resume. But they didn’t want me for the job I applied to. No, instead, they wanted me for the very thing I desire most to do with my life. Writing.
This experience gains me two things I most dearly love. It allows me to write and to help people. Still, it has brought me to a place that I never imagined I might end up at.
That’s both awesome and a little daunting.
Square peg in a round hole
The most basic breakdown of my employment history is exactly this. I am a square peg trying to shove myself into a round hole. Traditional workplaces and I tend to mesh poorly, and that is not just a matter of conflict, but more a matter of discomfort on both ends.
In a big business situation, I tend to uncover flaws in the mechanisms that drive the machines. I then desire to help fix those flaws, which tends to go against the way things have always been done. The ensuing conflict results in dissatisfaction and other negativity.
When I am in a small business situation I tend to wear multiple hats, which is satisfying…except my lack of ownership limits the reward potential. In more than one instance I didn’t fit in with the rest of the small team in one way or another – such as being a minority employee or the lone liberal in a sea of conservatives.
Given the nature of this current opportunity, I was very certain I was a square, oversized peg. And yet, I end up finding myself in a situation full of potential and possibility. That’s super exciting.
In my experience, most artists have this exact same issue. A lot of that is because conformity and art frequently don’t mix. There is a necessary feat of daring-do to create something new, original, and unique.
You tend to stand apart as an artist, walking paths that take you to unusual places others may not easily understand.
Still, society at large needs you. That’s because art in any form helps a society to grow and change. The square pegs still fit in somewhere.
We all end up in unique places
Every single human being on this planet thinks, feels, and acts according to their own personal mindset. How they reason, logic, believe, and approach life is singular.
Yes, there is a collective consciousness into which we all pour ideas and notions about reality. This is how you accept what is considered normal, societal ways of being, and so on.
There are individuals who drive the collective consciousness. They are empowered by other people to do so. This can be conscious or subconscious on the part of those people. But that’s how religious, spiritual, political, military, and business leaders become such leaders.
When people shift their faith, belief, and perception away from such leaders and their perception of how the world works, you get change. Sometimes this is because a man nails a thesis to a door, sometimes because a woman leads others to be empowered to get to vote, and sometimes it’s because more people find their own personal empowerment rather than giving it to those so-called leaders.
Most of the artists I know are self-empowered. They have a vision, whether that’s in words, wood, steel, or paint, that they are driven to share. Overall, because of the nature of their drive and focus, they tend to end up in places they may not have intended but that support and enliven them.
The biggest difference here is awareness.
Mindfulness and drive
When I began to develop and then practice my Pathwalking philosophy eight years ago, it was a singular notion. My inner voice said, you are a writer – practice your craft more frequently. That, in turn, opened me up to paying attention to my mindset.
At first, I didn’t recognize it as mindfulness. Now I can see that conscious reality creation is a product of mindfulness. Conscious is aware, reality is my perception, and creation is what my end product and life experience will be. Aware perceptive experience is just another, more clunky way of saying mindfulness.
Mindfulness is awareness of your thoughts, feelings, and actions. That awareness brings you into the now. This is because when you are aware you are conscious, and that opens you up to empowering yourself.
Most people don’t realize that they mostly live in their subconscious. Why? Because you’re on your phone, tablet, or computer even in social settings. You’re frequently distracted from the now and inattentive, as much as you might think the extreme immediacy of social media and the tools to get you there is a product of the now.
I totally do this myself. I get sucked into the distraction and become inattentive. It’s unbelievably easy to stop being mindful and allow matters of the subconscious to play a dominant role.
For example, how much control and influence do you have when it comes to economic and political shenanigans around the globe? Apart from voting, it’s very little.
Yes, climate change is a massive threat to society. You can’t do anything to change the minds of the deniers. But you can practice reducing your own carbon footprint and supporting companies that take proactive stances to impact this.
Mindfulness is the key to the car. Practicing it is driving it along a path.
Conscious reality creation is not always straightforward
While it is important to set a goal at the end of your path, it’s also important to keep it flexible. The journey itself is going to be full of twists, turns, obstacles, detours, and other oddities. These might just shift you to another point along the way that could end up being amazing.
The world is, frankly, pretty bat-shit crazy right now. That can be truly frightening, disheartening, and otherwise upsetting. Yet you have the power to change it, still.
The big picture of the world is made up of a collage of smaller pictures generated by the perception of reality of the seven billion people on the planet. If your perception is negative it will join the other negative pictures and be amplified. One small dark picture in a sea of light images is quite different from a sea of dark images all together.
Practicing mindfulness is a choice. Deciding to choose a path to take for your life is a choice. Yes, they will impact the change you experience in your life. But as change is constant and inevitable, wouldn’t you rather have influence and control over it than to just let it happen and maybe overcome you?
In this instance, the path I am on has not changed, but I did not expect to end up with this new experience. This is, however, an unexpected good situation for me. I intend to see just where this can go and how it can allow me to consciously create the reality I desire to live within.
Did you ever end up somewhere unexpected but awesome?
This is the four-hundred and twentieth entry to my Pathwalking philosophy. These weekly articles are ideas for – and my personal experiences with – mindfulness and walking along the path of life to consciously create reality. I share this journey as part of my desire to make a difference in this world along the way. I also desire to empower myself and my readers with conscious reality creation.
Thank you for joining me. Feel free to re-blog and share this.
The first year of Pathwalking, including expanded ideas, is available here. My additional writing, both fiction and non-fiction, are available here.
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