When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.
Paulo Coelho – The Alchemist
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho is one of my favorite inspirational stories. It feels a little hokey in places, but that doesn’t stop it from grabbing me and pulling me in every time I read it.
The quote above resonates strongly now. In standing up against being forced into unsafe working conditions I took an unpaid leave of absence from my job. Which is really scary! Teachers get treated like crap, seemingly more and more, but we do have job security. So it feels crazy to walk away from a job when the unemployment rate was 11.3% in July.
No one said doing the right thing is always easy.
So now that I’m not working, there’s a strong mental push to find a job. And I’ve given into that mental push a bit. I took a part-time job phone-banking to get out the vote in November. Working part-time allows me to honor my leave of absence, which secures a position for me in my school district next school year. It also allows me to maintain the little bit of savings I have for longer. So it takes some pressure off.
But to be honest, I don’t want to jump right back in to a full-time job that distracts me from … well … whatever the universe has in store for me. For more than a minute I’ve thought about going rogue. Maybe become a full-time yoga teacher or sell my art. Maybe teach in either or both of those capacities instead of being a science teacher. And I’ve been laying down the infrastructure to open a company to sell my art and be a yoga teacher for years. I even own the fictitious name: Living Daringly!
Last night, I put something out to the universe. I’ve made a bunch of art postcards in recent history. A combination of watercolors, calligraphy, and hand lettering. I put some of them on Instagram and let folks know I’d sell them for $5 a piece or 5 for $20.
Today, I sold out. I posted 10, because that’s all Instagram would easily allow in one post. Folks wanted those, and even the couple I didn’t post.
I’ve offered my art through my social media in the past. I even have a shop on this website! I tried Etsy, but there are so many sellers on there. I figured since I already have and pay for a website, I might as well set up the shop here. But I haven’t really advertised it much.
So now, among my mental meanderings and selfies, I’m going to start selling my calligraphy services, art, and crafts through my social media accounts (or perhaps directing folks to the shop). And there are a whole lot of teachers who say they’re interested in yoga classes taught by me.
So it seems the universe is conspiring with me even as I travel through a portion of my life where I don’t know exactly what I want. Maybe I’ll ultimately end up being a traditional teacher, and I’ll go back next year. Or maybe the universe is conspiring to take me somewhere else entirely.
I’m excited to put more of this creative part of myself out into the universe and see what happens with it.
I’m feeling so much gratitude right now. I’m grateful for those who bought the masks I’ve made since Covid-19 started, and allowed me to make so many masks for donation too. I’m grateful for the folks who have bought my art when I’ve put it out to the universe, both historically and now. I’m grateful for the folks who have reached out to me offering financial help as I enter this unsteady time. I don’t currently need that sort of help, but if I do I will reach out.
Admittedly, I’ve been feeling a bit down this week. Defeated that we couldn’t get enough power to push our School Board to open schools 100% virtually. Sad that so may of my friends and colleagues are so stressed, fearful, angry, sad about school reopenings, and that they aren’t really being heard by the powers that be. My art journal entry above mirrors some of that frustration.
But overall what do you do with those hard emotions? We could let them turn to acid and leave the soil barren. Or we could grow flowers.
I’m hoping the universe is conspiring to take me to places where I can continue to grow flowers, and help others do the same. Maybe we take those flowers and stick them in the barrels of guns. But we grow flowers and make the world more beautiful than it was before.