Phase 2 of my departure from a stable job with a paycheck and benefits.  A leap of faith – a step towards my undeniable destiny.  A willingness to take a chance on myself, my potential and my unexpressed talents.  This is terrifying.  I mean really, really terrifying.

It’s not that I now have to pick food out of the dumpster behind the nearest McDonalds.  It’s not that I have to put a kidney on ebay to make rent this month.  It’s the massive santa-like sack of beliefs that I have toted around for all my adult life (I am sure I toted around an oversized kid version too) that now I am forced to unpack to make the journey lighter.  This task is as much fun as cleaning the back bedroom of a hoarder house.  I can’t believe how much JUNK is in there!!

When I first answered my “Call to Adventure” as Joseph Campbell and Maureen Murdock would say in the Hero’s/Heroine’s Journey (they are both interesting and both have value), I realized the opportunity for change – and the choice I would have to make to get there.  As a friend of mine once said “Isn’t it great how when you have a destiny to fulfill, those around you start being the actors in YOUR play?”  The trick is that with the call to adventure, there MUST be action involved.  I was living in the ordinary world, but subconsciously yearned for the extraordinary.  Here was my call. I was intrigued. I knew this was my time to jump and just have faith the parachute would open.  I also knew that if I didn’t, the door of the plane would close and we would start our decent. There was a sense of incredibly urgency attached to this.

Joseph Campbell said:

Refusal of the summons converts the adventure into its negative. Walled in boredom, hard work, or “culture,” the subject loses the power of significant affirmative action and becomes a victim to be saved.

Remember, I had NOTHING to go to.  I wasn’t taking a slick new job across town.  I was GOING HOME.  Yes, to take a chance on me,  but who was I anyway?  Fear at this point can overwhelm you, like tsunami overwhelm, you are just swept up and knocked down and then the opportunity or feeling passes and the logical mind frantically grabs your arm and leads you to safety then tells you why you should have never been out there in the first place.

I knew this was my time.  I just knew it.  My actors were spot on with their timing.  A new boss came in and made it unbearable to stay, even when I was desperately trying to hold on to my mundane world and pretend to not hear the call.  Her role was to be relentless and she was – she played that role like a public sector Meryl Streep.  My coworkers, many of whom had attended my wedding 13 years ago,  held my hours old baby, and celebrated life ups and downs with me, slowly, as if on cue, backed away leaving me, well, alone.

This allowed the call to be unavoidable.  So I jumped.

But now, here I am unpacking this massive bag of my own “working-class” beliefs:  “We don’t quit jobs with benefits”, “Who are you to pursue your dreams?”  “Who do you think you are?” “Your family will suffer now” “Life sucks then you die”  “You don’t LIKE work, you just go do it” – these were all messages that I really didn’t realize were just sitting there.  For the first time, I am seeing the software that is programed in me. I have had to distinguish between believing is seeing and seeing is believing.  I have been believing and seeing.

For now, I am exhausted.  Going through my software is like staring at code all day.  I have to find the error and then try to figure out how to rewrite the code.  Nothing around me changes, but everything around me changes.  No income coming in but a sense of self, which I could never buy.  No insurance, but no sickness from holding it all together.  No routine, but excitement and adventure in the ordinary.

Why can’t I just let go and trust this?  Why can’t I know that just because the road is not paved, doesn’t mean I am on the wrong road.  That’s not my software.  It’s not in my code to think that.  At least for now its not.

I have crossed the threshold and there is no turning back.  Deb Peterson distinguishes the two worlds in her blogpost Thought co. https://www.thoughtco.com/heros-journey-crossing-the-threshold-31353   

The two worlds have a different feel, a different rhythm, different priorities and values, different rules. The most important function of this stage in the story is the testing of the hero to prepare her for the ordeals that lie ahead, according to Vogler (Christopher Vogler’s The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure).

One test is how quickly she adjusts to the new rules.

The special world is usually dominated by a villain or shadow who has set traps for intruders. The hero forms a team or a relationship with a sidekick. She also discovers enemies and rivals.

This is a “getting to know you” phase. The reader learns about the characters involved; the hero accumulates power, learns the ropes, and prepares for the next phase.

So here I am in midlife, trying to rewrite my code, trust my self and take the hero’s journey.        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNPcefZKmZ0

We are all heroes and heroines.  Where are you on your journey?

At the nail salon the other day, I started wondering about aging and our nails.  I have been pondering aging for a while now – noticing the emerging lines on my face, the change of skin and hair texture and the shifting of my body, but what about our nails?  What happens there?

Nails really are an important part of our body and one we should keep an eye on.  They can be a window into our health, conditions like liver and kidney disease, diabetes and even anemia can expose themselves in the nails.

One professor, William B. Bean, actually measured his nails everyday for 35 years, his findings:  each digit had it’s own pace, and his nails slowed their growth as he aged.  So they grow slower and change in thickness.  One reason seems to be our circulation starts to change in our extremities, which leads to color changes and the thickness of the nails.  Our nails can start to change shape too.  They can start to curl, discolor and/or become brittle. According to nails magazine:

As we age, our nail physiology actually changes as part of the nail growth plate (nail matrix) begins to thin. This phenomenon results in the development of vertical ridges along the nail. Compromised circulation or less efficient blood flow to our extremities can also contribute to nail ridging. These ridges are called onychorrhexis, a clinical sign of brittle nail 

We just seems to start drying out later in life, literally.  This leads to more dead skin around the nails and can lead to brittle nails. Although my nail technician of 20 years swears that ingrown nails occur at all times and are generally hereditary, ill-fitting shoes and improper trimming to contribute to this condition.  One thing seems true though – once you get one, you seem to be more prone to them.

This is also a time when all that hard work on your feet starts to catch up with you:  tennis, running, dance – all movements in which you put pressure on the front of your feet seem to create trauma that increase the likelihood of losing toenails later in life.

Color changes too.  You can go from discoloration to yellowish to a “napoleon” look:  a line of white, pink and yellowish.

What can we do as we age to take care of our nails?  Get regular manicures and pedicures.  Pedicures especially can be helpful.   That nice massage and tapping that your technician does can help with circulation and tension that might be in the calf and foot.  The pedicure can add moisture to your feet and sloughing the dead skin off can encourage new cells to grow.

If you don’t have a good technician – who is seriously like a good hair stylist – get one.  Always observe practices in a salon and make sure tools are sterilized (I once got a bad infection from a pumice stone rubbed up against my leg accidentally during a pedicure.  Imagine how embarrassed I was in the ER with seriously ill patrons only to disclose the source of my visit to be the puss that was emerging from my leg after a pedicure – oh and BTW, when I went back to the salon to complain, the lady said “oh yeah, those things are full of bacteria – we can’t sterilize them.”  – Nice to know.  They have since been “outlawed” in salons in Georgia.)

Midlife is the time to treat your feet right.  Treat your nails not just to a fill-in and gel polish, but also to enjoying the massage and keeping an eye on how they look, grow and feel.

We will talk more about the foot in another post – totally one of the most neglected parts of our body.

It’s all good.

I was just speaking with a friend who was saying the same things that I have been saying: things just start coming up in mid-life.  It’s as if things catch up with you and for the first time, you can’t shake them.  I think it is especially hard if you have lived the first part of your life for everyone else.   You know, where you go along to get along and you are polite and push down the anger.  I saw this quote by Ghandi the other day that said

I have learnt…to conserve my anger, and as heat conserved it transmuted into energy, even so our anger controlled can be transmuted into a power which can move the world

This is a powerful statement.  I think so many of us take that anger of mid life: anger at ourselves getting older, anger at our dreams fading, anger at being mortal – and lash out , ignore it or even worse, continue to push it down.  I think for many of us our response mimics the fight or flight response:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fight-or-flight_response.

Yet, I will argue there is another one:  fight, flight, freeze or FOLD – I think for many they just give up at this stage.  There is a midlife NOmentum and we MUST fight through it. 

It’s hard when midlife just sneaks up on you and then one day all these feelings happen.  It’s like a switch is flipped.  But for some, I think it is more subtle, like the character of Beverly Goldberg on the Goldbergs http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2712740/  – where the mother just doesn’t know how to let go.  We don’t know how to transition.  Our life is ending one cycle and shifting into a new direction – whether we like it or not.

It seems like in this time we experience unexpected events that shake up the realities we are clinging to, or feelings of restlessness or even anxiety that disrupt old patterns. It’s time to find that which we have lost somewhere along the way.

For me, it was my creative, carefree side.  The side that wrote and lived and laughed.

In Astrology, this is also called the Uranus Opposition and is explained in Erin Sullivan’s book, Midlife and Aging (see below):

The function of Saturn and Uranus, the mythic father/son conflict as we experience it in mid-life, is about resolution of conflict and the need for change, even if it is a violent or disruptive act. As a psychic complex, or a dichotomy, Saturn can act as the severing function of our creative ideas. We might be so worried about our own creativity that it never actually is given birth, but is “castrated” before any idea, concept, action or experiment is enacted! In contrast to this suppression, if Uranus has the upper hand, so to speak, then we can be too outrageous, too eccentric and simply unable to get our point across or find an acceptable median for behavior or communication.

The urge for creative experimentation and individuation at midlife can be stuffed back down inside the psychic womb, just as Ouranos stuffed the Hekatonchires back into the womb of Gaia. And, it would then take an “adamant” personal attitude toward ones’ own self to birth the inner urge for creative change.

How do we move forward when it all seems so painful and full of break ups and break downs?  I think we need to remember that there are also powerful break throughs waiting for us too.  Where are you in the midlife momentum?  Have you experienced any of this?

For me, I will just take it day by day.

When you leave a place that you have been at for some time, the sadness creeps in in ways not expected.  Maybe I am just too sentimental, but it was the little things that made me tear up.  The way a coworkers chair squeaks or the click of the front door as people came to work for the day.

I started to notice how people came in for the day.  Some just shuffled in as they had done everyday for the last 15 years.  Other were happier and some just seemed miserable.  I realized that I had been doing this out of habit for the last few years.  Never really questioning my role or fit, but just doing it because that is what I was supposed to do.  It was the path of least resistance.

As I thought about this, I started to notice that the path of least resistance is two fold.  There is a path of least resistance for what is easy and there is a path of least resistance for what is meant to be.  The first, allows the person the luxury of delayed emotion, the latter’s emotions seem to be on the front end.  The path of least resistance for what is easy is like buying with a credit card.  You get what you want right then.  The pull of a softer song, the soul’s “meant to be” path – which naturally carries the least resistance –  is like saving for what you want and finally being able to go to the store and buy it.

As I have been packing up and getting ready for my last day, I realized much of what I did was least resistance for what was easy.  As I looked around, I realized that I never really fit in, that I went along to get along and that even though some great memories were there, they were always tinged with a bit of sadness, confusion or frustration.

As soon as I made my decision to move on, it was like the world went into color.  I realized that my soul had been trying to tell me this for years.  A weight lifted off of my shoulders.

I still don’t know what’s next.  On my way home, this was my ride.  This was how I felt that day.  And it is all ok.

Well, I did what I said and resigned from my job.  No safety net, no concrete business plan, no well thought out next steps.  I vacillate between sheer joy and absolute terror.

I grew up to be safe – safe job, safe life, safe dreams.  There was no dreaming big in our working class 70s household.   There was no “trusting the process” or “going where your heart takes you” – it was keep your head down, keep out of trouble and be thankful you have a job.

My belief systems are like demons swirling around me:  “who told you to follow your dreams?”  “who told you are worthy of pursuing happiness?”  I have had to go in to battle.   Frankly, they are better armed and better shots.  This is belief system warfare and they win much of the time.

I have thought for a long time about leaving the steady, routine job that I have been in for many years.  The pull of safety, insurance and a steady paycheck were all just too hard to walk away from – why on earth would I walk away from that?

Well, in midlife, I am really feeling a pull in another direction.  And this one is not a “get a different job” direction.  This one is more of a “finding something that was lost” direction.  It’s one of those things that when I am working, I don’t take time to look for – I am too tired or busy, or both.  I have finally turned to face it, but it ain’t pretty.  Years of neglect on my dreams and desires have left it looking pretty sad.  I used to have dreams that I would find additional rooms on my house that contained dying animals or decaying food.  One Jungian analyst told me it was my potential – and that was 5 years ago.

So, here I am in midlife terrified and joyful, not necessarily in that order.  I have decided to follow my dreams and trust the process.  Crazy, right?