A Sabbatical from Force

Today, I grant myself an entrepreneur’s one-year leave of absence from what I seek and what I love outside of my start-up.

The angst of having too little time and too few resources takes my mind and heart away from passion for my idea and my execution of it as a business.  That feels like force against flow.

I’ve had them.  I will have them again.  For one year, I relinquish:

Adornment

I love decorating myself in fine clothing, silk scarves, gold jewelry, tinted, sharp hairstyles, kohl eyeliner.  Newly.  In my mind, Cher and Sara Jessica Parker embody the possibilities for exquisite and exotic attire.  I have loved shoes but find them less interesting since I’ve opted for comfort in flats rather than flair in heels.

I love setting a nice table with fine china, cloth napkins, flowers, arranging new ornaments on table tops, matching towels, shaped soaps.

I miss shopping.  I had not realized how stimulating I found the colors and textures, the array and arrangement of goods, the recreation of simply being there and gazing.  I bought rarely and carefully, but I loved to look.  Not having the power to buy turns the looking into longing.

For one year, I will use my dollars to adorn my company, not myself or my house.  Although I feel faded at times, I can make do with what I have.

Scholarship

As an entrepreneur, I am learning, but it feels haphazard, unsystematic.  Achieving business acumen doesn’t feel like an intellectual pursuit.  I miss tomes and systematic acquisition of expertise in a discipline through study.  I miss synthesizing the ideas and words of the great thinkers into meaning for myself.  I miss the vitality of philosophy.  The reading and writing and mind time this takes?  Ah, well.

Books

I have collected them since I was a child.  Ten moves in ten years pared my stacks to a core.  Even they sit un-opened.  With a book club choice thrown in and an occasional must-know business book, no reading and buying of books for one year.  Peace.

Salary

O, I was a kept woman when I had a salary!  I had no idea of the luxury and security of the roomy container of someone else valuing my work and paying my way for it.  I could treat the whole table to a meal, donate to charities, buy an adornment, buy cat toys and cat trees.  Ah, well.

Spiritual Path

I struggle spiritually.  I had pieced together enough of a spiritual hovel in Tampa to feel a little peace, a little safety, while I continued to thrash.  I’ve been back in my hometown almost three years.  Striving to find a place, the people, a practice is wearing me out.  Enough.  I’ve put it down and picked it up again many times before.  I can do that again.

Order

Let’s see, move ten times in eleven years, return to your hometown, fall in love with a guy, decide to marry him, pack and pare one more time, bring together the lives of two mature adults and two mature female cats, then start two corporations.  The best place for the clean laundry is the dining room table.  One cat also finds it a best place.  Peace.

Mandatory Culturally Designated Rituals

Trying to fill all roles and meet all expectations and be all things to all people according to a nationally decreed holiday calendar has become beyond bearing.  I haven’t yet replied to Christmas cards.  For one year, I gather with my friends and family by heart, not by date.

Force has wrung joy from my days.  Let the flow of what I can truly be and do as an entrepreneur, unhindered by trying to make things happen, begin.