The Year Of The Pivot

As the end of my first year, post-corporate life nears an end I find it difficult to encapsulate the changes I’ve both seen and felt. I feel so fortunate to have had the career I did. I loved my job and the life it provided, but I also realize now that this former life came with confinement so often seen in what we refer to as “corporate life.” My life for over thirty-five years was about “them.” The customer, the client, the corporation itself with its hierarchy of bosses, management, middle management, and coworkers. Suddenly, it was gone. The initial feeling was of shock, albeit not traumatic shock but just the shock of change and changing life patterns. Gone was the horrendous commute. Gone was the deadline and the timeline. Gone was the camaraderie of the team and industry. What was left was the self, something I hadn’t fully encountered for quite some time. The self, from what I’ve learned over the past year, can be challenging, surprising and unlike the self we imagined we were or imagined we had. Suddenly, I was viewing the world through a filter that I was applying and not through a filter applied by someone or something else. I have to admit, it was liberating. The choices, timelines, decisions, and feelings were now distinctly my own. I found myself asking questions I had never asked, not knowing where the answers would lead me, at least initially. But soon a pattern began to emerge, a pattern of freedom, creativity, and conversation. Old skills were refined, new skills were groomed and I began to realize my new life was that of the explorer, searching for both the known and unknown. My life as an artist and jeweler emerged as did the exact nature of what I felt I needed to accomplish. “Giving new life to old treasures,” became my mantra. My days are now filled with both the search for and the connection to past and present. Recently, I found myself walking a ridgeline in rural New Mexico. The temperature was below freezing and as the sun departed for the day I flicked on my headlamp and watched as the patterns of Mescalero petroglyphs began to emerge from the darkness around me. “Why here?” I thought as I simply sat and consumed the experience of being. What could I learn from this place? The opportunity to even think or experience this place and time was something my new life affords and for this, I am eternally grateful. I take my new role, that of the artistic explorer, seriously. If I can learn and pass along I will. The confinement of my new life now ebbs and flows based almost entirely on my talent, knowledge, understanding or lack thereof. I hope that you will come with me, in mind, spirit or even as a guest in our new van! See you out there. AmyK.