Stepping off the cliff

Albert Einstein is widely credited with the quotation, "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results."

I've been getting up, taking my medication, going to work, coming home, trying to be creative and falling asleep. (guilt, fear, worry, sense of failure, worthlessness). I've been getting up, taking my medication, not going to work, trying to be creative and falling asleep. (guilt, fear, worry, sense of failure, worthlessness). Wake up, medication, work, creative, sleep. (guilt, fear, worry, failure, shame, worthlessness, depression).

Awake, guilt, fear, medication, work, worry, creation, failure, worthlessness, depression, sleep.

This wasn't working. Something needed to change. The equation needed to be adapted to alter the result.

I'd been aware for a while that something needed to change and for a long time I had believed that something was me. If only it was so easy. I did try, I found mindfulness really helpful for a while but essentially it wasn't enough to alter the outcome. The change apparently needed to come from outside rather than within. It seemed you could change the world by changing yourself but my reality tunnel was too fixed and my emotional conditioning too entrenched for me to believe I had that power.

Something other than me needed to change.
Looking at the bare data, I should have worked out sooner what would have the greatest result. After all; emotions, creativity, wakefulness and sleep are all part of me. So is my cluttered ecclectic library of a home. Which leaves medication and work and if I'm entirely honest, one necessitated the other and as I have a thyroid condition I don't pay for prescriptions...

I'd been working in a bookshop for sixteen and a half years and it felt like part of who I was. I had learnt so much there; about reading, writing, people and myself. I had run the shop and managed staff, I had created displays which had somehow appeared (uncredited) on the front of the national industry publication. I had worked in the perfect location for enabling my addiction to reading and buying books. But all things come to an end and something had to change.

My last day at work was last Saturday and I will miss the shop and my colleagues tremendously. But something in the chemical reaction between me and that specific job seemed to be no longer resulting in a positive outcome.

It feels a little like freefalling and at the moment the ground seems a long way away. It feels like cutting off a limb. But maybe the plane was on fire... Maybe cutting off the limb frees me from a bear trap which would have resulted in my death...

Maybe it's only by stepping off the cliff that I can find out if I can fly.

Maybe, probably, something had to end, to be lost, to die in order to reset, restart, be reborn to live again.

"Only after disaster can we be ressurected. It's only after you've lost everything that you're free to do anything. Nothing is static, everything is evolving, everything is falling apart."
Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk

It's time to evolve.
It's time to tear everything apart.

It's time to be free to do ANYTHING.

...

WOAH... (said in best Keanu voice)

...

Note to readers: I know I am not my job, I am not my Khakis, I am not a beautiful snowflake, but winter is coming and it's time for me to be anything I damn well want to be including a fucking ninja dinosaur. I am ridiculously lucky that I have an opportunity to step out of employment and reset and all thanks to my hubby, family and friends... Donations will be gratefully received and all commissions will be considered :)