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You might have noticed a new look to my website. After a month of deliberating on the design, I decided with my designer, Kayleen of Booyah Creative, on this layout. So much of this process involved taking small steps to move toward the finished product. In the past, I’ve often complained about the process, not knowing how to adjust to the uncertainty of it and leveraging too many of my thoughts on the final outcome. In midlife, though, I’ve shifted my perspective to focus on the privilege of having a chance to take part in building toward a particular outcome.

The Latin phrase In medias res kept repeating itself in surround sound this past month. It lead me contemplate how many times we are in the middle of things and how often we forget it is an honor to submerge our feet into the trenches. When I write, there are times when I compose one word and then another and eventually it leads to a few paragraphs. In many instances, I’ve deleted entire pages because I wasn’t content with the sentiment or the word choices. I might throw my hands up in the air and claim how hard it is, but isn’t the beauty in those difficult moments? I’ve witnessed it over and over again in so many aspects of my life – in the middle of a long run, my legs and breathe wane and I often want to give up, but I continue. When I reach the finish, there is a sense of relief and accomplishment. There are mornings when I am struggling to move through the routine of balancing work obligations and making breakfast and shuffling my daughter to school. There are countless middles that come to mind – in the middle of arguments, in the middle of doing homework with my daughter, in the middle of an essay or in the middle of the day. But these middles, the ones I’ve tried to hurl through in the past, are the ones that are calling me to pay attention. My tendency is to welcome beginnings, fast forward toward endings, but skip past those middles.

I’ve heard about honoring the process and sinking into the middle of the doing, instead of trampolining my way toward finishing. With every attempt, the end will come, but what tilts and colors the finish? The middles. It is here where so much of the deciding, the learning, the living and paying attention is crucial. I lived the first half of my life thinking about ends and outcomes and holding those places as sacred ground. The holy is in the becoming. I’ve always wanted to believe in this philosophy and for reasons I cannot explain, this became apparent while participating in the redesign of the website.

I hope you take a chance to peruse my new site and witness this new becoming.