Living In the Grey Places

I have noticed over the last few years that the Universe has been throwing me a veritable curve ball that it knows I have trouble hitting: the need to surrender control. This lesson comes fast and furious from every known and unknown angle. It shows up in when I am buying groceries; when I am combing my hair and one braid turns out more polished that the other; when I take the dogs out and Theo refuses to pee at the designated time and an hour later are back out the door looking the proper pissing post; when I am grocery shopping, recognize I am forgetting something that I cant think of  but promptly remember when I am home preparing my meal; when I try to avoid the pigeons in the parking garage but find my roof awash in bird poop the next day. This list could go on forever as again the Higher Source is calling me into ask every chance it gets. This story is probably most true in my career. I have long since given up my type A tendencies but I am still very insightful and precise and this leads to me examining every crack and chasm there is to judge. I can sense problems and failure a mile away and up until a few months ago, I thought that it was my calling in life to fix them. But through a bout with high blood pressure, being asked to leave a job because I was making the ED look incompetent, and a chronic inability to relax, I have been brought to my knees. I am no ones savior. There are swords I am willing fall on but there is only one of me. I have learned to choose my wounds wisely. Apparently, however, there are more lessons to be learned and more miles to tread before I come fully into being a centered, balanced, happier me. I am not there yet. Enter my current job. You'd think that a job that has "fun" in its informal motto wouldn't pull out all of my bad habits, but yet here I am ready to jump head first through a plate glass window every time someone mentions the word ambiguity. Add the phrase "get comfortable with" and I become mildly homicidal. Someone is going through that window with me. I am a creature of strategy. Give me a why and I can give you the world's best fool-proof how. I'll admit that I piss people off in the process of getting the how up and moving but I succeed. I don't know how not to succeed, but here, the why is less clear. The how is slow coming, and the movement is well... meh. My first inclination is to jump in and fix it, but I realize that if I do, then this lesson will roll back around like groundhog's day, people will learn nothing in the process, and I will remain that island of a person living in her laboratory, doing what I know best to do. Nothing shifts. Nothing changes. Simone remains the same 70% Simone that I was before I got here, and I will be balled up in a corner soon asking myself yet again "how did I get here and how did it come to this?" I might even be asked to leave again. I am already experiencing the first warning signs: CEO telling colleagues that I might be "too smart"; board members asking me to lay out marching orders without giving them a reason for treading this path forward; colleagues rolling their eyes when I open my mouth to speak. I've been here before. I moved 1400 miles... no one thousand, five hundred, and one miles away to be exact... from home to experience things that I have yet to experience in more familiar surroundings and this means more than poutine and 36 inches of snow. I know my time here wont be forever, but I do want to come out of this with a sharper worldview and a stronger sense of self. This means more than leaning heavily on my strengths but rather accepting my weaknesses for what they are. One of which being that sense of helplessness and lack of identity when I am not in control. Part of the reason that ambiguity unravels me at the core is that it causes people to flip and flop like fish out of water... eyes bulging, mouth puckering and gasping... you get the picture. My chest tightens at the thought. I want to put us back into water without first understanding our need for a fool-hearted leap, in the first place. Fuck your reasons and crazy ass notions. Get back into the fucking tank before its too late. The trick here is that if animals species development is a result of evolution, jumping onto land is part of the painful process of becoming something more than what you are now.  I got to learn to let us flop all over the place and be ok with it. Its funny, the thing that I strive the hardest to protect in my life is the idea of personal agency and autonomy. I will straight  fight someone if they try to tell me what to do. It my deepest trigger because I am profoundly believe that God gave everyone everything that they would ever need to move through this life properly. I don't need your direction. With that said I am a walking ball of straight up hypocrisy. Maybe it stems from caring too much and feeling to deeply or maybe I just like the high of seeing my vision manifest in others. Whatever the case might be, I like to lay the tracks, and rarely are they off course. God is trying to either redirect this fervor or is trying to break me of it completely. I haven't decided yet what it is. I am leaning towards the former. I am no good at personal relationships. I hurt people's feelings left and right. The collateral damage is always massive. Again, there was 3 weeks worth of planning and orchestration designed and executed to ask me to leave my last job (Quick side note: it shouldn't have been a gleeful moment but it was. The depths of foolish that they went through only to find that I had already typed up my letter of resignation. I just wanted to make one last check). I am no respecter of persons when it comes to getting things done and fixing shit. Its worse in my love life, but that's a story for another day. Let's just leave it at the fact I am single and probably should stay this way indefinitely. But I suppose that if I just learned how to cede absolute control every once and again I might find myself willing to share mental and emotional space with someone. I am not there yet. But back  to this latest gig which for all intents and purposes is really a great place to take off my shoes and get comfortable. Burlington is still a bit suspect, but again what place isn't... Oh yeah, the Bay Area, but there is time to get to the mythical magical land of Calafia. I just need to ride this very important wave and trust the process. Give the people around me the grace and space to show up and show out... but if they fail to sprout legs and lungs, be prepared to use my gifts. And maybe this is what its all about? Knowing when to be She-Ra but recognizing when Adora will do just fine.