Black Butterfly
I posted on my Facebook page recently that I feel like I have been in a cocoon all month and that I will stay that way for at least another month. But of course if you think about the literal meaning of that, then it means I feel like changes are happening and something better will be revealed in due time. That is indeed the case.
This course I am on isn’t new. Like any path, there are hills and slopes and even those have varying degrees of management. While I was working on the jigsaw puzzle business, Village Works Enterprises, there was a lot of change on that path, but it kept things interesting and life balanced. Then when I got drawn deeper into my full-time job (thus out of balance) because of the changes in management there, that entrepreneurial road got quiet and flat and boring. My attention went to other areas of my life that usually work just fine as long as I am in some sort of balance. Important stuff for sure, but maybe not as critical as I was making them out to be. It’s like a chip or crack in the paint and totally repainting instead of seeing if that area can be fixed. I wouldn’t quite say things came to a stop because I never stopped thinking about getting back to what I was doing before, but I was just strolling, inching even, like a caterpillar. Like how I finally got back to my original metaphor? I do. :-)
When I got a new job, the road started getting bumpy and interesting again because I was no longer surrounded by this storm of confusion and uncertainty brought on by the changes at the job. I could think straight again and I could see my road again and I started picking up some speed when I wasn’t even intending to. Picture a caterpillar on skates – the old-fashioned kind I grew up with, not in-line skates. Come on. You have an imagination. You can do it! My little caterpillar started moving a little more in September 2016, exploring the coaching I had always planned to do while thinking about the job I am in. Before long, I really got into the thought of starting that training in September 2017, when I originally thought I’d wait until 2021, the year after I turn 50. But it felt right. And it put me back on the track to creating a business as I thought about the flexibility I’d want in order to make room for that kind of training. Surprisingly, I wasn't thinking it should be the business Ramona and I had started already. Not yet. This new one would be based on something I already knew how to do and the hurdles wouldn’t be so high.
Those hurdles have been just right so far. Starting the mastermind group seems to be the last thing I needed to kind of steal away for a bit to think about this entrepreneurial thing I am doing. And as I got clearer on that vision, I got clearer on the fact that I can’t do this alone nor do I want to. From my CYDS group, I was able to talk to someone who found me a VA I could easily afford. Mary Ann and I just started working together last night, but I feel the organization happening a little smoother in my head now as we talk about what I want and then I let HER handle it. As I organize what she is doing and work on the things that will help her to do it to the standard we both want, I find myself organizing for some other folk now too – the other editors who will help me, for instance, and the other VA who will do things that are not Mary Ann’s specialty. I feel like things are taking shape and turning into something more developed and beautiful that can eventually fly without any more help from me than the winds of inspiration.
It’s fun and exciting to ponder those things I am currently wrapped up in, but that’s also why I feel so sequestered right now with my thoughts and my books and my podcasts and the weekly calls with my mastermind groups (biweekly with my lovely accountability partner). Not so much, however, that there is no room for the engaging new client that came along recently. No, no! There is room for her and her new books! Welcome! There is room for other new ones too with websites and presentations and marketing materials and social media sites and all sorts of other wonderful content-related projects I’d love to help perfect. There’s also room for the confused ones who are stuck in the middle of that quagmire not sure how to get out. I am thinking about all those ladies – because I’m pretty sure they are mostly women – when I make my plans with Mary Ann and implement the next new thing. Bring it on. I’m ready to spread my wings.
P.S. In case you’re wondering about the post title, this is where it comes from and what I sing to myself pretty regularly these days.
