life'n'stuff

Rhonda’s posting about saying “no” has got me thinking. For a few years, I have been working to simplify my life and lead a more duckherding existence. Mr Duck Herder teases me because when we met, I was “go get’em girl” – successful, ambitious, clever, busy. The last ten years has seen me shift from a “bright and shiny clever young thing” in the community sector to a “cranky girl who would really like to be left alone” in the public service. The more successful I became, the less meaning and fulfillment I got out of my work, and the crankier and more frazzled I got. Intuitively, I became a “down shifter” – actively seeking jobs and projects that interested me and seemed important, rather than focusing on jobs as a staircase to bounce up. And then came the Lacuna Sabbath, an attempt to grow the parts of my life I was passionate and interested in, and stave off public service induced insanity.

Recently I was challenged to come up with my life’s vision or purpose. This was a really tricky question! What is your vision or goal for your life?

I gave it a bit of mulling over, and was able to draw inspiration for two unrelated sources. Once was a reference in a book written by fellow ONCian Alyson Hill, called “Chooks in the City”. In this book, Alyson, while sitting on the back porch, nursing a cuppa and watching her chooks, muses that she doesn’t want to be a battery hen, bound and subjected to other people’s demands on her time, body, freedom and production, but a free range chook –spontaneous, raucous, engaged in the moment and completely absorbed in her work and play. The other obvious source of inspiration was the Radio National program on tutti fruiti time featured in a previous post. When I hold these two concepts in my mind, I fell like I’m getting very close to a very happy place – a way of living and a state of being. So, my life purpose or goal has become this:

To be a free range chook living in tutti fruiti time.

Where my hours are stretchy, ribboned, enchanted and wild. Where my life is earthy, connected, engaged and abundant. To live in harmony with the seasons and cycles of the earth. To live and love well.

The other thing I have realized is that to be happy, I need to see tangible outcomes from my work. Looking back over my work history, I have been most happy, most fulfilled and most energized when I have felt that what I am doing makes a tangible difference to people’s lives or to the planet. Obviously this is why I get so much joy out of gardening and building stuff.

It also explains why the strategic planning focus of my current work, and the shift away from direct service delivery feels frustrating and futile - not in general, but for me. Funnily enough, once I became a little clearer about what was important, new opportunities for duck herding started to emerge. And now, I have only three weeks to go, and a little break, before I start a new project, working from home, arranging my own hours, working on something that feels important, exciting, meaningful and challenging. Sometimes I will go to work in my jammies, other times I will be on the road. It is all good! Suddenly, all sorts of other folks are offering me additional consulting work – so I am feeling a growing sence of confidence that this is the right thing to do, and that the universe supports my growth in this area. (yay)

Yesterday I purchased a beautiful second hand desk for my new home office and I will be using my Dads original office chair from when he worked in the PM&G way back in the 70’s.

I feel so lucky. Yup, this is what duck herding is all about.