I write about career bliss.

You know that. Especially if we’ve kept in touch for a little while via my posts.

But I think that you also know that I don’t write about career as being separate from life. Career and life go together and are together for best results at feeling alive.

I believe that there are some people in the world (people like you and me), for whom being a prestige hungry, workaholic isn’t the answer to the void of missing contentment.

A career is something that can be deeply meaningful. Not unlike how some people view having a child (not me personally just in case you ever wondered – which is the reason some of my clients actually like me – even some who are mothers).

A career can be the place in your life where the world’s hunger and a deep inner gladness meet.

And then we are returned to, what I believe to be, is our original reason for doing – and that is play.

For some of us, a career is indeed the outlet for a remarkable expression of being.

It’s called “work,” but career bliss is really about a life that doesn’t make you choose between your career and anything else that would make your life anything less than something that you would want to be apart of and alive for.

Rather than making choices, you make the choiceless choice.

But it’s not easy when us humans are expert at complicating because we feel so disconnected from a very wise, innate part of us – the part that knows that the essence of life is play.

A real work is play with integrity (love that!).

To compliment that thought – here’s another: That there are three marriages in life – as one of my favourite books points out:

One to the self.

One to your work.

One to another (the one we always think of and refer to as though it’s the only one).

First the self:

When I was 27, things started to unravel and the life that I had lived up to that point was rattled to the core. I just couldn’t keep it together any longer because it was too hard. It was too hard because it wasn’t my life, but rather a life influenced by the desire for others to approve of me.

I wasn’t sure that I’d have anything left after that.

And I was quite scared about that, but not terrified. I was more terrified to continue on as I had been.

But I did have something left in the end. I had myself – a deep sense of self. Something I had been looking for and longing for that was hidden in plain sight the whole time.

And I made a conscious vow to mySelf.

And from that deepened commitment to know and be myself, came work that feels like a suitable, soul expressing union to me.

In my work, I don’t keep my approaches and philosophies a secret nor am I hidden away any longer in a government program or in academia trying to be more mainstream than I really am. And that’s good because you’re reading this.

Very good indeed.

And there’s that detail of marriage to another:

On September 19 of this year, Daniel and I stole away with a last minute (read: teeny tiny) entourage of accomplices for something most accurately described as a “pop up” wedding.

Just remembering it feels like a blissful dream.

It was held at the soul nurturing, gastric-fantastical, magical and perfectly whimsical Sooke Harbour House.

Is this career bliss? Hell yeah!

To me. It all counted towards the journey to now.

But there’s more …

My definition, idea, vision of career bliss isn’t just about marriage. It’s also includes the experience of birth and death.

A soul wants to be in a body:

My sister-from-another-mother is having her first child and just before that happens I’m going to see her. All the way to the north of Spain. She knows and I know that motherhood will change her and every time I see her after the birth of her son, she will be a literal mother.

It will be lovely and it will be different.

She knows she will be busy and seeing each other may be less often than it’s been. A baby is a big deal.

And so to honor our relationship – our sisterhood, visiting with her feels urgent and necessary.

It feels like an honor to be there at the door of transition with my friend.

Not unlike working with my (really amazing may I say – seriously) clients.

And then death came a knockin’ and a soul went home:

As I found myself making plans to visit my friend in Spain, my thoughts turned to Sweden where I had lived for a couple of years. And during my planning, I learned that a dear friend of mine was mourning the death of his mother.

My first thought was, “Oh no, my timing is so bad.”

But completely unprompted he wrote to share that my visit was welcome and that he was in fact glad for it. “Timing was good. “

And then I felt glad for he too is at the door of transition. And I feel graced with the honor of being in his presence as he crosses a threshold.

Within the span of a month, marriage, birth and death are a lot to take in. Thresholds that are crossed over a distance of time at a cellular level even though they are points on a timeline.

While I may not be experiencing all of them personally, I am apart of them in some way. Their chronological and personal proximity to me create a trinity to take note of.

Since for me and to me, my real work and real life go together and to ignore or try to separate them is unrealistic I’ll be taking a sabbatical for the month of October.

Because, if you can, if you let them, the experiences offered by life come along to support you at being you doing what it is that you do.

I’ll return in November. But don’t think that I won’t think about the connection that I feel from writing for you.

I will miss it.

Early wishes for those celebrating Canadian Thanksgiving and Happy Halloween.

Until November then. xo