Notes from Jenn's World

Just a quick check-in about what's going on in my world . . .

Avon Walk for Breast Cancer

It's hard to believe that the walk is almost here! Next weekend, July 12th and 13th, I'll be walking over 39 miles in San Francisco and Marin. Wow. What an absolutely incredible ride. I have met so many truly wonderful people -- survivors, friends and family of survivors, others who have lost loved ones. While the walkers are phenomenal, I've been even more in awe of the crew, mostly husbands of walkers who provide water, snacks, entertainment, and rides for the injured, keeping the walkers happy, healthy, and safe. This whole experience shows you the softer side of people as total strangers hose you down on really hot days or stop you in the street to give you a few dollars. And the event is still to come! Be thinking of me next weekend and send me lots of love and good energy! As of this writing, I am at $2179 -- only $21 shy of my goal. If you'd still like to donate, you can reach my personal page by clicking here.

I'm working!

Just a couple of days after my last "Notes from . . ." I had a lunch meeting that kicked off a conversation about my doing some work for the Hoffman Institute. I just wrapped up a database project for them this week and I'm officially starting my long-term contract work with them on Tuesday. Yay for steady income working with great people and for an absolutely fabulous organization. They're well worth checking out -- I can easily say that the Hoffman Quadrinity Process is one of the best things I've ever done for myself, literally life-changing all in good ways.

4th of July escape

I'm super excited to be driving down to Los Angeles tomorrow where I will meet up with three good friends from college. We're taking a mini-cruise to Mexico, essentially three nights and two days with a single stop in Ensenada. I'm looking forward to catching up, great conversations, putting my feet up, relaxing, and visiting a country I haven't yet been to. While I'm sorry it is so short, if it had been longer we probably wouldn't have been able to squeeze it into our busy schedules this summer, so mostly I'm just grateful.

So what's new in your world? How are you treating yourself this summer? I'd love to hear all about the love and fun and flow happening in your life now. Namaste.

Standing in the place you were born for

You are the music while the music lasts.
~T. S. Eliot

Have you ever had that feeling where you know that what you're doing right now, in this moment, is exactly what you need to be doing, absolutely necessary for you to be doing, an integral part of the cosmic dance? Everything just flows, you open your mouth and the right words come out, you feel content from head to toe, completely plugged in and radiant.

Of course, we all know what it feels like not to be in that place, doing work that feels like a drudgery, that feels disconnected and kludgey and just plain not fun. It's the subject of countless happy hours with co-workers, phone calls with friends, and journal entries. But when you have the good feeling, the absolutely right-on feeling, what do you do with it? Do you talk about it with the same passion, give it the same amount of energy all that negative feeling was allotted? Or do you hold it in, feeling for whatever reason that it is something to be kept to yourself, maybe protected, maybe savored, but shared with only a few and glossed over at best? It's as if as a society we really just can't get enough of that icky feeling. We use it as part of our bonding with friends and co-workers, and have an uncomfortable feeling when we're around people who are happy, genuinely content with their work.

I feel blessed to have experienced being in the place I was born for just yesterday, and I'm still a little high from it. Man, oh, man, I genuinely believe if more people were doing their work, feeling that feeling, a paradigm shift would take place. I can feel that shift taking place within me around the other pieces of the pie that make up the bigger picture of my work. I was gifted with an experience this morning where I had the opposite sense the work I was doing, where everything was a struggle and I could feel discontentment radiating out from my core. The timing was perfect as coming off of that high from yesterday made me much more conscious of it. I now know that I have some work to do there to ascertain whether it was just resistance being thrown up or if it was genuine discord. If it's the former, then it's time for me to clear my channel and pave the way for the work to flow through me. If it's the latter, then I will need to find a way to extricate myself from that work gently yet expediently.

It's a gift, really, to be able to recognize in the moment what isn't working for you so that you can take the steps to shift the situation. Some of those steps may be relatively small, dealing with your approach to the work or the people involved with a project. And some of those steps will be relatively large, requiring a career change or a leap of faith into the unknown. But whatever it takes to get you on the track towards doing your life's work, the work you were truly born to be doing, is well worth it. What steps can you take this week or even today to help bring you into alignment with your true calling? Even if it's the teeniest baby step you can image, give yourself the gift of taking one this week. Let me know how it goes! Namaste.

Photo: "shining through," originally uploaded by jim simonson

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Don Miguel Ruiz, the fourth agreement

4th Agreement: Always Do Your Best. Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse, and regret.

~Don Miguel Ruiz, The Four Agreements