Taking Control of Your Life: Working Through Situations, Not Problems

Recently I’ve been feeling a bit like Rapunzel stuck up in a tower. Knowing what she wants, looking at the wide world in front of her, without being able to experience it.

Since graduating university two years ago, my partner and I have been trying to work and travel abroad. We were able to go to Australia to work for a short while, and hit some of the worst luck of our lives in our time there. Somehow we ran into simply abhorrent people, terrible work situations, getting screwed over time after time. The only godsend was my sweet auntie Nikki who saved the day when it came to camping and professionally deluxe meals in the outback.

Since flying home to help out at the land, we haven’t been able to save up money to travel like we had originally wanted to, two years ago. There has been very little opportunity for making cash out here, unless we depend on odd jobs from my dad (which I don’t always like doing as it can feel more like pity pay than a professional work relationship).

So in this month of solitude in the yurt, I have been trying hard to focus on ways to make money and reach our goals. I have been a bit set back by feeling that a lot of my talent is in language and writing, which aren’t easy money opportunities here at the land and will take a lot of time to see return.

In terms of material goods, I can dabble in a lot of things: woodworking, sewing, art, jewelry, herbal concoctions—but none of it is quite clicking.

Nothing crafty has been giving me that deep gut feeling of this is what you’re meant for that I feel when I help people through situations.

The closest thing to bring me such joy was making a custom bound-rune wooden ring for my sweetheart's mother for positive health and personal power. Maybe if I could find a way to make intentional magical power-full jewelry, but the personal connection, time and detail needed make it an unlikely income.

I was watching a ted talk the other day, and the speaker Ashley Stahl was talking about how our careers shouldn’t be based on our passions but on who we are.
So then, who am I?

I look back on the material things I keep with me through the years and I have a surprising amount of little letters from friends current and past that show deep appreciation for my presence, for my ability to listen and help them with situations. Remember from my last post we work with situations, not problems.

I really enjoyed working with my university for two years as a resident assistant, helping students through the everyday worries of balancing school, family, social relationships and self-care. I felt a lot of motivation to bring people towards the highest versions of their happier selves.

Encouraging and motivating people by opening space for deep personal sharing felt very meaningful and human. I know that at the very minimum, I can identify that I am human. This connection is deep for me.

I don’t want to be living someone else’s dream, and I don’t want to feel confined. I can’t make big steps on my own without making some real moves to get there. I find a luxurious attachment to material things, this attachment to objects has been something I’ve tried to work out of my system recently.

The universe definitely teaches me a lesson when I become too attached to material goods, and I will often lose little things that I really love. These losses remind me that home is not necessarily where your things are, home is where your heart is. My heart yearns for deep personal connections, and my heart is still yearning for the big wild world.

A quote from a recent author-love of mine, Henry David Thoreau:

_{“It is not enough to be busy… The question is: what are we busy about?”}