I’ve been backsliding – but I can still get up

It has been so long since I blogged, I knew I was slipping back into "corporate mode" where it is all work and no time for reflection.

Starting a business has that seductive quality about it where it seems that with just a little more effort, something worthwhile will be gained and a rest point will be reached.

That is not the case at all, you know, because there is always another challenge around the bend that can be surmounted with just a few more hours effort… Days go by and there has been no time for savoring life.

What brought me up short was listening to some visitors from northern Virginia discussing their lives and careers.

Their work and commuting takes 13 hours a day and they are dedicated executives who are all striving to achieve worthwhile goals in an increasingly unstable working environment. Listening to them was like opening old wounds and I experienced a sudden rush of empathy and personal weariness.

I thought, "I’ve been there and I’ve done that and I thought I’d gotten it out of my system. But here I am working 15-16 hours a day in a beautiful country environment and I’m not taking time to enjoy the sunshine and the beauty of country life."

Damn! I’ve fallen into the clutches of a seductive career opportunity again!

Encountering a career situation that allows you to create almost without limit is incredibly addictive. Days pass with your attention fixed on situations and designs that test you to the limit. The outside world becomes a blur of flickering images and tiny voices that attempt to distract your attention from the designs that challenge you.

Our visitors jolted me to my senses and my absence of blog posts galvanized me into a semblance of action. I’m back in action and I will try to share some of the beauty that I have been observing.

I’ll leave you with two images to enjoy. This one is titled, "Elves in my Garden" and it is a new work from local artist Liz Stucki that I had the pleasure to frame.

The earlier image is a photo of the artist’s storm-shattered window showing the delicate tracery of the broken safety glass after a recent storm. Liz is currently figuring out how to capture this image in another pen and ink drawing.

I am looking forward to seeing what she does with it.

(click on images to enlarge)