Transitioning

There has been something of a hiatus here. Not for lack of things happening. I have been incredibly busy and it’s a time of change. Something about the end of one year and the beginning of another always means being busy but this year has been an extra busy time with much transitioning.

I have been finalising a challenging work role that has been the focus of my energy for much of this year. I was heartened to read Danielle LaPorte’s recent post on entrepreneurial spirit inside and outside the 9 to 5. Whilst my job recently was much more than 9 to 5, it was very much carried out in the spirit of entrepreneurship, of change and of creativity in solving problems with heart and courage.

I read this year about being a linchpin and a career renegade; more about the art of non-conformity and about being a fire-starter whilst in this work role over the past nine months. This spirit very much pervaded the way I tackled some long-standing issues. The feedback was positive and I appreciate how much my reading and engagement with social entrepreneurship has guided my leadership work this year. In fact, I don’t know what I would have done without it at times. It was fascinating how many times I became stuck or was trying to solve a crucial problem when a critical post from Chris Guillebeau, Colleen Wainwright, Danielle LaPorte or Jonathan Field, amongst others, came through to light the way.

I have also been travelling and busy getting organised to leave a warm Sydney to visit a very cold UK and Europe. I have enjoyed again the feeling of transitioning across countries, being in the air suspended between and the arriving. I have been visiting East Sussex and the place where some of my ancestors lived for hundreds of years before part of the family broke itself off and moved to Australia for warmer climes and a new life of opportunity in the 1830s.

I am especially interested in one ancestor: my great, great, great grandmother, Jane Honeysett, and her journey. In the end, it was not a happy one but I am inspired by her transition, her hope, what she left behind, where she went and why and what it was like living in Sydney as an early woman settler. The female migration experience is not much written about it seems. I am keen to find her voice and that’s why I have been visiting East Sussex and listening to the voices and the accents; feeling the icy weather; walking around the church where she was married in 1825; driving through lanes with their high hedges, the worn and ancient stone homes with moss on the roof; and visiting the castles, inns and abbeys that were the centrepieces of life in East Sussex then and now.

I am also beginning to write that story now. That is my goal: to write a novel that is the story of Jane’s life and the female migration experience. Visiting the land of my ancestors seems to have enabled me to start to write finally, breaking through that invisible line of resistance. I am grateful for The Writers Cafe software by Dr Julian and Harriet Smart, which I found through Joanna Penn and her podcast conversation with Harriet. The software really is very good. After all my procrastinations about starting to write, it really was as simple as blocking out some scenes already lined up in my head and filling them out.

This transition to actually starting to write seemed to need to occur in the location. I’m not sure why but I had a keen sense in arriving of returning to the place where Jane could not return after she left. Maybe she is my guardian angel, some ancestral support, helping me. I know she could not read or write so maybe I am her voice, her writing, her words and her song and being in her birthplace and her home was a catalyst for beginning.

I have also been Unravelling this past few months, working through the online experience Susannah Conway creates that is very deep and unlocks so much.  Through creating a supportive environment focused on images and words and enabling an online network of participants, Susannah successfully creates connection between people and within souls that is magical. It’s hard to describe and the unravelling is still occurring, but I suspect this experience has also been the backbone of much of this transitioning. I’m comfortable in my own skin and its various guises of leader, researcher, writer, reader and blogger and enjoying the connections and cross-fertilisations this year has brought, most recently culminating in so much arrival.

What transitioning is happening for you at the end of this year?