It was a marvellous Christmas, which for me was four weeks of pure immersive joy. Home and table full of three generations together by choice, eating and cooking and shopping and wrapping, playing games and watching movies … in the constant flow of positive energy even doing the laundry and washing the dishes were together time rather than chores. Memories into gems, moment by moment.

Of course the crash would come. Folks return home. Children go back to school. Life moves forward into the fresh pages of a new year. I knew this, I was ready for this. My older daughter, being driven back to PEI by her dad. My younger daughter, off visiting her boyfriend. My son, packing his car to head back to university. As I watch his car back out of the driveway, I feel it. The silence, heavy like a leaden blanket, as for the first time in weeks I am in the house alone. I sit, feeling the loneliness like a blackened iron curtain pushing my mood into darkness and my body toward the ground.

And as always, it is in these darkened spaces that great awareness lie.

I have always dreaded the new year. At first, I swallowed it as the post-Christmas sag, the transition between a home full of candy, lights and greenery to the grey routine of the everyday. Then I dismissed it as the seasonal blahs, where lack of sunlight and frigid cold kept me captive in house and thoughts. Now, as I sat weighted in a silent house, I realized my sadness was not with the inevitable departures and progression from Christmas to ‘real life.’ My grief was with the knowledge that there was no longer any distractions, any reasons, anything between me and going back to work. My grief was at the continued dysfunctional relationship I have with what I define in my life as ‘work.’

It was time for me to deal with it.

I allowed myself to feel the weight, the darkness, the sadness, the sinking … and like tipping a world upside down, there came glimmers of light, of possibility, of vision. What I felt was an invitation, the breeze of wide open spaces to create and to shine, and was wrapping myself in darkness as a way to hide. What did I want to create for my life, and where was ‘work’, what was ‘work’ in all of it? I asked myself the question and relaxed into my chair, allowing the answer.

I want a job where I don’t have to go to work.

I laughed out loud, but it wasn’t my voice. It was the voice of my ancestors, of friends and colleagues bound to their physical worlds of scarcity and survival. You need to work, you have to work, or else you starve, you’re a bum, you aren’t doing anything with your life. I thanked them for their input, swept it away, and sat with the statement. I want a job where I don’t have to go to work  was not me wishing to sit in my chair every day doing nothing, but me wanting a job that flows with the rest of my life, a job I take pleasure in as I do with hanging with my kids, visiting friends, watching movies, trying a new recipe, or breathing deeply as I watch the sun set. I want a job I do not need to take a vacation from, a job that gives and takes with ease and joy, a job with which I have a healthy relationship.

Healthy relationships require clarity and honesty. Between work and myself, I have rarely allowed either. Tasks and accomplishments were defined by others. Invited to lead, I would defer to the safety of minion. What mattered was the client’s needs, vision, deliverable. I allowed none for myself, and when  overtired and frustrated from not being heard, would tune out or walk away. The problem is not my job, it is in the labels and stories I continue to attach to ‘work’.

I have a job that allows me to set my own hours, choose my offices, determine my work plans, and engage with some of the warmest and most enlightened people I have ever met, people who continue to support and challenge me on my journey. And for all of this, I am paid promptly every two weeks, with full benefits, an annual raise and even a Christmas bonus. It is a job that fully supports my life and invites my creativity. If I let it. And there was the greatest awareness, that I have everything I want in work and in life. I have everything I need to create new and different.  I need to let myself know and trust it.

Healing my relationship with work, allowing it to be a source of joy rather than a chore, allowing it to invite my creativity rather than trap me in tasks, will not only lighten my new year’s transition. This allowance will transform my performance anxiety into creation, and will heal my relationship with my writing. For writing had become ‘work’, used only for generation of income to pay bills, allowed to do or be nothing else but a chore, and with no direct income from it, a waste of time. I still feel those pathways in need of clearing. I sit writing now after two days of growing agitation, where I had meant to write, was going to write, but other things got in the way … now, the 30 minutes I have spent with myself in words will clear clouds from the rest of my day and the excitement glowing in my gut – rather than the churning angst of fear – is so energizing, I sit here toasty warm on a freezing cold day. I am allowing myself to feel each invitation from ‘work’: doing so allows me to mindfully choose, willing immerse, and feel when it’s done. No more story of losing myself to work, or of my work being pointless. The difference made is not in the wider world, but in my relationship with it, and with myself. And I have these words as a reminder for when I forget. For the anxiety is never far away. I can feel it nudging against my warmth as I prepare to end my writing and shift to the files on my desk. I choose this, I can do this … and I choose to trust what happens after that.

Thanks for your presence. What a year this will be.