Happiness Is: perfect messages

It was a warm sunny Saturday afternoon. I just woke up from a wonderful nap. I reached for my cell phone to text someone. As I opened the phone a tiny piece of paper fell out. It was a fortune. I looked around as if I would spot the culprit who obviously planted this message inside my phone. No one was there. I found my husband downstairs and told him thanks for the fortune, it was perfect. He didn't know what I was talking about.

I had never seen this fortune before and the odds of it accidentally squeezing into the little crack of my phone...well, it's highly unlikely. I could have tried to figure out how it happened. But instead I chose to say thank you to whatever synchronicity caused the strange event. All I know is the words of the fortune were exactly what I needed to hear. "In a gentle way, you can shake the world." Typically life's message are a bit more subtle, but I really needed to hear this on that particular day. It really was the perfect message.

Peeking Behind the Passion Curtain

"Live your passion!" "Blog about your passion and make money doing it!" Sound familiar? We are hearing this everywhere nowadays. Discovering your passion and living the life of your dreams has become trendy. Where does that leave us lost souls who don't really know what our passion is? Or maybe we have an inkling but aren't certain?

I've been analyzing the current passion trend and I think it is a bit misdirected. It preaches that we should be passionate about "doing" something. I disagree. I think we can only truly find passion in who we are "being" as a person. What we love to do may come and go. We're human. We get bored, we get distracted, we get disillusioned with shiny golden promises of fulfilling our dream (which must always be career oriented, apparently).

I won't lie. I've been feeling pretty passionless lately and all this passion crap was really annoying me, so I decided to find my own way to deal with it. Here is what I did:

1. I made a list of  past experiences in which I truly felt passionate and alive. I didn't put boundaries on the list. It didn't have to be just career stuff. If I thought of something that happened when I was 6 years old I put it on the list.  If it's something tiny and insignificant, I put it on the list.

2. I looked at my list and confessed aloud, "None of these things are my passion." Then realized I must look behind the activities on the list. I needed to ask WHY is this on the list? Example: Making family documentaries. Ok, so WHY did I enjoy that? Answer: because I was creating something that would be treasured forever. Because I love the element of awe and raw emotion that washes over a client any time they see the movie I created for them. That is what I really love about it.

3. When I did this for each item on the list I began to see recurring themes. Strangely, they have nothing to do with making movies, which I always assumed was my passion. See what I mean. Other items on my list: planning a surprise party for my parents anniversary. Shooting a concert of a favorite local band, editing it in a cool way and giving it to them for free. Coordinating charity work for an orphanage in Bulgaria.

At first these activities seem unrelated. But once I look behind the curtain I see they all provided me opportunities to create something that would be "treasured forever" by the end recipient. Now THAT my friends is my TRUE PASSION. Other things that came up for me in this exercise are that I love taking elements and rearranging them into something new. Also I found the pattern that I love working as part of a team and collaborating.

Figuring this out is like freedom to me. I can implement my passion of creating treasures for people in a myriad of ways, not just making family documentaries. As an artist I no longer feel imprisoned or bored. I feel I can take what I learned from this exercise and BE a more passion-filled person.

If you are feeling a bit passionless yourself, give this a try. Think your passion is photography? WHY? What is the essence behind taking photos that gets you jazzed? Then, how can you take that essence and apply it to other mediums, or different situations? Please share what you learn about yourself and your passion in the comments. I'd love to see if this is helpful to anybody else.

Happiness Is: using my hands

This week I felt the urge to do something creatively different. I noticed an interesting shopping bag in the recycle pile. The crispness of the paper caught my eye and the way it reflected light was kinda cool. I noticed the logo on the bag and thought it would make a neat sticker to seal an envelop with. Thus an idea was born.  I experimented with making interesting envelops and cards out of shopping bags and junk mail this week. I loved the feeling of sticky glue on my fingers and feeling the different paper textures. I miss the days of editing film/tape that involved me actually cutting the physical tape with a razor and editing it into place with expensive splicing tape. There is something comforting about connecting directly with your creation. Now we edit video on the computer. Yes, it's easier and faster, but I also feel the computer acts like a filter between you and the creation, separating you from it like a plane of glass. You can still see it but you can't touch it in the same way. Now let's see....what other uses can we find for junk mail?

"Happiness Is" will be a regular feature on Saturdays here at Disrupting the Rut. Be thinking about what you saw or experienced during the week that just made you feel happy for no real reason. Don't you just love those random things that pop up that seem almost like the universe created something just for you to smile about?

Rut's This Blog About?

Welcome to this new blog! Thanks for stopping by. I felt like my other five blogs didn’t fit me any more so I decided to start a new one, hehe. A new season of life is beginning and I want a fresh new space to document this phase. I did the corporate America thing, I did the business owner thing, I did the family planning thing. I found myself facing massive burnout with my company and decided to cut way back. I now find myself in a strange limbo where I’m not sure what is next for me. I do know that as I’ve been busy working and trying to achieve stuff, my kids grew tired of competing for my attention and I grew tired of not having much fun. My life became a series of endless desires to achieve more, more, more. It’s the American way, right? Work is top priority and there is no time for real relationships or experiences that take your breath away. Alas, I grew tired, oh so tired of it all.  My life has become a rut.   

As I completed the final video projects for my clients and prepared for my leave of absence I began to notice small amazing things in the mundane day-to-day stuff; stuff I never noticed before because I was too busy. I noticed each day blessed me with interesting observations, humorous encounters, and moments of stunning beauty. “Disrupting the Rut” is my place to remember these things and say thank you to them.

So now is the time for me to rediscover new parts of myself, to remember why I chose to be a filmmaker in the first place. I have forgotten. Now is the time to enjoy my children while they are still young. (I may or may not enjoy them as teenagers, lol.) Now is the time to explore and push my comfort zone as an artist. I don’t mean as a filmmaker, I mean as an artist in life.  I have become so complacent. I didn’t realize that while I was slaving away in the editing suite, my comfort zone was rapidly shrinking into the rut. So this space will also be an accountability tool to remind me to play around with those boundaries, have some fun and see what happens.

If this sort of thing interests you, I invite you follow along with me.  Realize and mess around with your own rut. Share your victories with me and let me support you too! Ready, set, LIVE. Time to Disrupt the Rut.