Purposefully Lost

For a very long time now -- not my full 51 years, but some period of time dating back to fourth or fifth grade, perhaps -- I have built a reputation around some key attributes: grounded, organized, dependable, logical, funny, smart and determined. I've received birthday cards showing a business woman in a suit, with heels and a laptop, sitting on a beach towel in the sand and still working. I've defined myself in those terms: driven, I guess; aiming for something, ticking off accomplishments like grocery items.

But I am not that person. I don't know if I'm not that person anymore or if I'm not that person because I've never been that person in the first place.

What I know is that I am decidedly NOT that person at this point in my life. Now.

Now, I am lost.

And here's the key: I am lost because I intentionally tossed aside all those characteristics and goals and assumptions, and now I'm standing naked and somewhat embarrassed and most decidedly unsure.

I can't say this is "just" because my mother died. Or "just" because I'm alone in the world with no parents and no safety net. Or "just" because I work for myself and it's possible that I will have no clients come January 2011.

I think it's more fundamental -- and more complicated, at the same time -- than that. I think it's about willingness. I have reached a stage in my life where I am willing, however uncomfortably, to say aloud (to myself, to others), that I am looking for something really, really and truly, authentic, and that something is me. Not all the characteristics and goals that other people ascribe to Amy Selwyn. But really and truly me.

My psychiatrist tells me, smiling, that he knows I want to break out of where I am now -- geographically, psychologically, logistically -- and do something different. And, he adds, it will become clear to me at some point and then I'll go do it. The key, he says, and I believe him (I REALLY REALLY do and I REALLY REALLY wish I didn't), is that I must sit with all the discomfort and the jealousies and the uncertainties and the wondering. Just sit. Sit until the path becomes clear.

In the past, I have picked a point --- a personal and/or professional Northern Star --- and I've aimed for it no matter what. My father died and I kept going. My heart got trampled on and I kept going. I got demoted and I kept going, certain and comfortable and undeterred.

So now I'm resisting the urge to pick a point. It would feel so much better, I can tell you that, if I could simply say to myself, Right, Amy, next stop is a $350,000 per year position based on the West Coast and a 10-year plan toward retirement. I could do that. Oh, there would be obstacles, of course. But they would be logistical, practical obstacles. And I'd find a way through them.

Instead, I'm looking at the nighttime sky and saying, Wow, a lot of stars. A lot of possible Northern Stars. I'm not going to fix my sights on any of them. I'm going to admire those stars from my little piece of earth, and I'm going to let an inner voice finally have its say. That inner voice is the voice that hasn't been mastered digitally in Dolby sound by engineers; it hasn't been influenced and perfected by other peoples' dreams and ideals. That's probably why it's a soft, elusive and childlike voice. And it's damned hard to hear it.

Today I find myself wishing I could change course. So much easier to just give up and go back to a much more driven lifestyle. To be that person who stands on the beach in panty hose and checks e-mail.

But there's no turning back once you commit to letting yourself get lost.

I am lost. Purposefully lost. And that is the only state of being that will allow genuine and authentic change. It sucks, that's the truth of it. But it will get better. In time.

In the meantime, I admire the stars, but make no claim.