0015 | Trash day

Today is garbage day, symbolic in a way, and the last one before Thanksgiving. My list today was gratitude for discarded things: old beliefs, old relationships, old clothes, my mother’s left-behind possessions—I am grateful for the celebrations that could not have taken place without them, and grateful to release these burdens. 

I am grateful for the loves I have known and those I will not know, for books I have read and books I will not read, grateful for the place each released person or object or belief has held, so that now, as I rejoice in the release of it, I recognize and appreciate the space that has opened in my life. I am grateful to sugar, for all the comfort it has brought me, and grateful to let it go. I am grateful to my family, for my having belonged to neither my mother’s nor my father’s side of the tree so that as I explore this other than conventional life, my otherness is not uncomfortable, unfamiliar. I am grateful to be untied from family rituals that feel like obligations to me. All of these releases that once felt like disconnection have come to feel more like freedom as I have stopped resisting, stopped struggling against letting go. 

In the wake of this untying, I am free to live a life that I have envisioned: to think, to feel, to speak my truth to myself and others, to build, to make, to teach, to evolve, to preach love to the outcasts and freaks, to anyone who has ever felt like she may not fit in, who has whittled away at herself in order to please someone whose love she felt unworthy of receiving. It is true: we are unworthy of love… that kind of emotionally expensive, insidiously self-destructive love that would exact the price of dimming ourselves rather than celebrating our wildest nature and being true to our own souls. We are utterly unworthy of that kind of love that demands that we forego kindness to ourselves and others, that we stifle our own voices, suppress our own stories, and adjust to “normal” to fit into a box labeled “lovable.” I am unworthy of that brand of love. 

The love of which I am worthy is divine, celebratory, non-judgmental, accepting, unprejudiced, and patient. I will give that kind of love, and I will accept no other kind in return.I have struggled for so long with a fear that I was unworthy of love, and I was right, but it was such a small, man-made love; there was never enough to go around. 

Only a massive, bright, universal, elemental love can encircle me, for I am enormous. My magnitude is inconceivable to the human mind—only the heart with its divine wisdom can fathom how vast an expanse I fill, so how could any mortal man love me with any simple human love? How could some earthly being wrap some small kind of love around my great, spiritual mass and aspire to keep me warm? 

I am the universe; it is in me, in each of us. Without a big enough love, a love that extends to all of humanity, how can we fully love the person standing right in front of us? Our love must be like water; it must cover most of the planet and sink into the earth, it must be pure, we must offer it freely to everyone, including ourselves, and it must be what we are made of.

0014 | Two Months and a Prayer

It's June. June already. So much happens between back then and right now, and I am challenged to write any of it down outside the pages of my longhand, pen and ink, stream of consciousness blatherings in a stack of hardcover, extra large moleskine notebooks. Since taking up Julia Cameron's morning pages, I'm a beast on paper. Not so on the computer machine.

Months ago, Marie Tjernlund introduced me to Comfortable with Uncertainty and I have not been so grateful for a book recommendation since my dad's girlfriend, Gloria Jean, gave me Eloise as a child. I still love that tattered book and Eloise is still a hero of mine.

I have been thanking the universe for my discomfort, for putting people and experiences in my path that stir me, either positively or negatively. I've been examining my relationship with the reality I have created for myself. Today Ben and I read two short meditations on equanimity and then while we sat, my heart spoke a prayer. I have only recently taken up prayer again, and it looks and sounds and feels so different from my childhood. The God of my youth was spiteful, bloodthirsty, and played favorites with his children. Then the Jesus came and offered mercy and forgiveness and love, but formal religion has largely ignored that bit, and besides, salvation comes with a lot of groveling and browbeating and more playing of favorites. The deferred heaven and hell plan also makes very little sense to me. We create so much of each right here.

My soul has not yet come to terms with the idea that there is any higher power than love itself. I have no proof yet--let's call it faith. I am sure the science on this one will bear out eventually. In the meantime, I choose to believe in love. I choose to believe that the greatest power in the universe, Love, asks one thing of us: MORE LOVE. I cannot believe that the highest power in the world would ever dictate division over unity, separation from each other over connectedness. We are neurologically wired for connection and meaning--in these things we find purpose, and in purpose, we find joy. I'm off on a rant, and I was going to share a prayer. Every day is proof that I am a work in progress.

May I enter this day wholeheartedly, ready to give and receive limitless love, compassion, joy, and wisdom. 

May the earth beneath my feet connect me to all other beings who also share share this earth.  

May my heart be open to you, my fellow human, and to the delight of your very existence. 

May I practice compassion, and in that compassion find how we are connected.  

May a daily practice of compassion teach me a relationship with you in which I am at peace in traveling my own path, and in allowing you to peacefully travel yours.  

May I seek gratitude for my discomforts as well as my comforts, and open my mind and heart to the gifts of their lessons. 

May I be willing to let go of expectation, of blame, of aggression.  

May I be willing to give up being right, so that I may instead become what I am meant to be.

0013 | Nothing Is Real Until It's On LinkedIn, and Nothing On LinkedIn Feels Real

I've been officially "self-employed" for roughly 5 weeks now, and I'm spending quite a bit of time working very hard on not being terribly hard on myself that I don't have the entire rest of my life figured out. I have launched both Inquisitive Human and Elemental Cupcake & Pickle. I'm pretty much flying by the seat of my pants, doing what feels right, and today it felt right to attend an introduction to krav maga class and then test out new grain-free chocolate chip cookie recipes and eat them... all. I also happen to be reading a stack of spiritual and personal development books in preparation for a workshop at the end of May.

Inquisitive Human is talking to me, letting me know I am still unprepared to equip other people with the tools they need to sustain joy. Elemental Cupcake is talking to me, letting me know that a bad-ass paleo coffee cake isn't all I need to make a successful go of it. I have a good deal of work to do.

So, while my ego has no interest in publicizing the fact that I am poised on the razor's edge of the possibility of epic failure, here it is: I'm starting out on new adventures. Everyone knows it's true and real because I just updated my LinkedIn profile, and everything on LinkedIn has the ring of truthiness to it, doesn't it? 

I haven't figured out why I feel compelled to look at or participate in LinkedIn, other than still not having a Facebook, Twitter, or SnapChat account (I did recently get an Instagram account! elemental_cupcake!). Perhaps it's the illusion of connection, or the idea that I can create my image to be anything I desire, more or less within the constraints of the reality of my work history. Maybe I want to feel and project that I have much more figured out than I actually do, but I do not. This is the scariest most exhilarating thing ever, and I'm trying my very most bestest to make it look reasonably well thought out on social media... except for here, of course, where we're just lettin' it all hang out.

I suppose I still want to feel as though I have a place to share my wins, to reinvent, to blossom into something that can carry the weight of 42 is Love into even the most corporate context. Maybe I have faith that I have enough love and enough soul to light a candle in the soul-suck instead of cursing the darkness. And there's this: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ragsmadison. Just when you think there is nothing for miles in the desert wasteland of corporate slag and entrepreneurial pretense, you run across a gem. Thank you, grain-free cupcakes, pickles, and holistic reality interrogation for making me whole again. And thank you Rags Madison, for infusing LinkedIn with some juicy reality.

0012 | There will be no sigh. My resignation is a truth grenade.

Okay, I know... it's been months. This terrible thing happens when you're lying to yourself about what's okay: you can't really tell the truth to anyone else either. And so being quiet while you figure it out is sometimes a better way to go. That was me. Quiet for a minute. But the good news is that I figured something out. Why does this keep happening to me over and over? It's like it will never be done already.

You know how they (whoever they are) say that people don't leave jobs, they leave bosses? Well, isn't that just the ever-loving truth? So last week I left my boss. Actually, last week I became my own boss. I have named myself Chief Cupcake Officer and Picklemeister at elemental cupcake & pickle. I also happen to be Senior Creative Director, Operations Manager, President, and everything else. So there's that keeping me busy.

I also gave myself the job of Holistic Reality Interrogation at Inquisitive Human (and everywhere else I happen to be). I was not entirely serious when I had business cards made a week before I quit XX, but Ben and my Bowenwork therapist (seriously, google this mysterious healing magic) and everyone else I've giggled to has been encouraging me shamelessly. You know who you are. What were you thinking? And thank you so much. I am available to take interrogation clients in April 2016.

And for anyone who wants to read it, here is the resignation letter I sent to my boss after realizing that there was no possible way to have a conversation with her, but that I just might be able to start one elsewhere. Lo and behold, I have had more real conversations with my co-workers and senior leadership since sending that email than I ever could for all my pleading. I hope this is the start of a bigger conversation within XX - one that reflects the real values of the people who work there, and not just the temperament and atrocious behavior of one boss. I really believe that people can be made better or worse by their leadership, and that sometimes there is too much at stake to continue being led poorly. Mmmmm... steak.

Here's to speaking your truth. May it set you free.

....................................

XXXXX,

Although I am declining tomorrow’s meeting, I am open to starting a new conversation next week if there is anything you would like to discuss.

While I would like to have contributed to a more human voice in how XX Services engages, both internally and externally, the kind of transformation that leadership professes to want for the team can only come from leadership itself. I have yet to be persuaded that there is a better engagement model than one that is customer-centric. The current internal resistance to inquisitive and respectful conversation leaves me with no context in which to exercise my strengths within XX Services.

       

An unspoken insistence on maintaining the status quo of consultative posturing and a XX-centric engagement model is evident in our wake of unsuccessful engagements and unhappy customers. We offer prescriptive solutions, and only when those go sideways do we begin to assess the problems—and then only because they have become our problems. We give away countless hours to make things right. Over half of our team sits on the bench while we are not invited back to re-engage.

The predominant culture is one of telling vs. asking and consulting to vs. partnering with. It is a culture that is uncomfortable with ambiguity and transparency. Rather than appearing to not know the things we cannot possibly know before engaging in a dialogue of discovery with each other and the customer, we come out swinging, often with leadership heading the charge. We are reactive and authoritative, rather than attentive, thoughtful, and inquisitive. Communication flows in one direction: down, and rarely in a manner that is well-received by the customer or each other. We tolerate entrenched bad behaviors at the expense of collaboration. We are unskilled at asking relevant, relationship-building questions. We are even worse at listening. Trust is expected but not given. And we wonder why everyone is so bloody difficult—our customers, our teammates, our sales team. We wonder why XX reports abysmal morale. We choose power over partnership.

I feel strongly that our current model is neither a sustainable business practice nor a healthy way to live.

Please accept my resignation from XX Services, effective immediately. I will work with XXXX and XXXX on the logistics of my exit.

JAMES-OLIVIA HILLMAN

XXXX PROFESSIONAL SERVICES | SOLUTION CONSULTANT

M+ 000.000.0000 | james-olivia@XX.com