“Traveller, the path is your tracks
And nothing more.
Traveller, there is no path
The path is made by walking.
By walking you make a path
And turning, you look back
At a way you will never tread again
Traveller, there is no road
Only wakes in the sea.”
Antonio Machado
Being in transition feels weird. It feels incredibly odd to be in a completely new situation professionally and yet have all of my surroundings remain familiar. This is still my house; these are still my children; these are still my clothes; that is still my dog. And, yet it all looks and feels so different. Different because that is NOT still my job. That place I made tracks to and from every day for nearly eight years is no longer my place. Those responsibilities are no longer my responsibilities. Those politics are no longer my politics. Those victories, those losses; those aspirations and those complexities; no longer mine.
I am out of my body just a little bit. Just enough to feel the disequilibrium of the change. I walked away willingly and with purpose, but that doesn’t mean I am clear, confident or confirmed in my new venture. I am in progress. I am discovering that everything that is the same no longer looks the same because I am seeing it with new eyes. The eyes of someone who must see the world anew if I am to be in it in a new way.
I am in the world in a new way. I am a stranger to it and it to me. It is stunning to me how much possibility there is in a new beginning. That must be why I feel stunned.
I am a traveller on a new path. This is my path. These are my tracks.
Here I go.
Here I come.
