After the sad day yesterday, I’m ready to get back on track and keep the momentum going for this journey.
But something very important became really clear to me over the past 24 hours. While I was holed up in my little house in cold and dreary Washington, and as I became more and more isolated, retreating into myself, I lost track of friends and community. The embarrassment of my situation, or what I saw and felt as embarrassment, kept me from reaching out. I just couldn’t stand seeing the pity in their eyes — or what I perceived as pity.
Now I realize that if I had been more open and allowed people to see how vulnerable I was, I probably wouldn’t have felt so alone. And that realization hit home with Jacob’s passing yesterday. There has been such an outpouring of love and support from people I have lost touch with and from people I don’t know! The posts I made on Facebook and Instagram created a shower of love and compassion.
It shows the power of communication — whether its face-to-face or on the internet. The internet can be a trap but being selective about how you communicate and who you communicate with, I believe is the key.
I need to foster those relationships that support me and that I can support. It’s going to take a lot of courage (which is not a word I would normally associate with myself!) to allow myself to be more open and — gulp! — vulnerable. Because of what I do, being a full-time house sitter, I need to foster relationships online and build a community of like-minded people in cyberspace. And I need to re-connect with the local friends in the area, wherever I happen to be. Something I have neglected to do, once again because of trying to avoid the what I see/saw as pity in their eyes, when most likely, it was just compassion and empathy!
Yesterday, I spoke to my closest and dearest high school friend Rosemary, who lives in South Africa. Thanks to WhatsApp, we had a wonderful conversation and she hooked me up with her online WhatsApp group — my girlfriends from the same class! It’s been many years since I had any connection with most of them, but it seems like a fairly close-knit group who were so welcoming. Some are also in the States, and it will be fun to find out where and perhaps find house sits close by, so we can reconnect, in person.
House-sitting is really proving to be a voyage of discovery for me. Besides getting me out of a geographic area I wanted to leave, it has introduced me to other people who are doing and living it. The group I am most involved in is very supportive and open, and it’s here I discovered this new marketing process I am working on, in a sort of roundabout way!
But that’s how things happen, as I am discovering! The Universe works in weird and wonderful ways and I just need to remain open to them.
This coming week is going to be intense as we (in the course) start to build out our sales funnels! Up until now, it’s been a mental journey and for me, a journey of self-discovery which I have avoided for far too long. But now it’s going to be about working online with a software program to develop what I am hoping, is a new chapter in my inappropriate life.
Cheers.