Walking the Path

I am so excited. Tomorrow I return to uni for the year and my new working arrangements commence. As from tomorrow, my work hours will be less, and I’ve taken on one more uni subject a semester. Even though I’ll be earning less money (and I wasn’t earning that much to begin with...) this balance feels better. From now on, I’ll be a publishing student who supports herself by working in childcare, not a childcare worker who studies publishing in her spare time. It’s a small distinction, I know, but an important one.

It feels like my new year is starting now, and these last two months have been a sort of holding pattern – necessary to recharge and regroup and save a little cash, but not the year proper.

This week, there is also a Transition Darebin meeting happening. At this meeting, I’ll be talking to members of the ex-initiating group about the role I am to play. I’ve volunteered myself – for better or for worse – for the role of media officer. I figure it’ll be a way to use my new found publishing and communications skills for sustainability and community, and it might even look good on my resume...

I’ve also joined the ‘Clothing and Materials Working Group’ (better name yet to come) working with some other people around ethical and sustainable clothing and crafts.

In a way, this week feels like a microcosm of the rest of the year to come – shifting focus from the dominance of a career that doesn’t quite make my heart sing, to all the things I really do want: books and how to make them, and sustainable living. It feels so exciting and I feel the presence and power of it.

I was at a talk today at the Thornbury theatre, Women of Letters. Six women wrote a letter to their ‘turning point’ and read them out aloud to us. One awkwardly beautiful woman told us her turning point came to her as an epiphany one listless, leisurely afternoon in a long line of listless, leisurely afternoons. It was something I’ve heard many times before, but there was something about the immediacy of this young woman standing before me that really made it resonate this time; she could have been me, so her story could have been mine. ‘Find your passion and stick to it,’ she said. ‘Walk that path, even when it’s hard,’ and she tattooed a compass on her wrist to remind her.

I have no compass tattooed on my wrist, but I can feel it pulling me in the right direction. I know my passions now, better each day. And I’m walking the path.