The Sound of Silence

No emails. No calls. No projects. For the first time in 28 years, my professional life is reduced to a big question mark. After years upon years of introducing myself by my title, after seasons upon seasons of working 12 to 14 hour days, celebrating successes and fixing mistakes, working until I felt my brain could take no more, I find myself today at the most important juncture of my career.

Looking back, I know the door is closed. Nothing waiting for me back there could reignite any ounce of professional passion. Squinting as far forward as I can possibly see, there is only fog. Every now and again the profile of an idea seems to appear barely through the fog only to disappear the closer I try to get to it. I am thus left with only my present uncertainty. The messy middle between the one I used to be and the one I will become. Grieving a past that has served me until recently and taming a mix of anxiety and excitement in my heart for a future I know not of as yet.

To me uncertainty has always felt like a threat. Control, or better said the semblance of control, has always been my go to scenario. To do lists, plans, ideas covering pieces of paper and sketches of strategies and ideas flowing out of me. At least something was getting some traction. The way I know this is a transition with a capital T is the silence. The silence of ideas, of paper, of passion. Crickets. This is not a crisis of jobs, of work, of organizations. This is a crisis of values. My burnout of the past has not been of physical work, not even of the thousand emails I have probably answered. It is a burnout of the heart, of connection and of integrity. The worst kind. For while I now know more than ever what matters above anything, the fear of throwing myself into any project is exponentially higher: it would not be my mind, career or knowledge I would wage, but my heart. And my heart recovers slowly and remains scarred.

I wish I had lanterns to go out with, looking for myself, as Emily Dickinson was claiming to have. I look for lanterns in books, in podcasts, in new learning. In the few conversations I have with the few people who only listen, making no attempts to fix, pity or push me. The fog remains. And with it, the threat. And so my old companions are back to protect me: my anxious mind, creating scenarios worthy of horror movies I would not be able to watch, my obsessive thoughts, repeating fears unarticulated, testing my feelings about them to make sure I am still “ of sound mind” and my depression, heavy and sticky like lavender honey, bringing with it a languishing I do not desire, dampening my joy, rendering any new ideas as “too much,” “worthless” or “too hard” and dragging along a fear that I will never be myself again. My old friends, making sure I have all bases covered.

And I realize, as time in this fog goes by, that I will be myself again but the self will be a different one. I am grieving the myself of yesterday, placing her gently into a box of precious memories and bracing myself for the wait of the myself of tomorrow and everything that she will bring.
In the meantime, I am left here, in the messy middle, with the sound of silence.

Photo