Things on my job are changing. I have been at the same company for decades… multiple decades in the same department with ever-growing responsibilities, and for the past few months, the air is just a bit tough to breathe. In recent weeks, I’ve described the atmosphere of walking on dry sand on a hot day, and even though I know the terrain, I’ve walked this terrain, my feet are unsteady, and my balance is off. I want to walk in a different direction. I need my gait to quicken or to still, but I need the path, my path to change.

If I turn to my left, I walk towards the ocean, beautiful and complicated and inviting and terrifying. Whatever balance I have on the sand will disappear the further I walk into the cool water, but there is so much in the water to see and feel and experience. Maybe if I walk just far enough from the dry sand, I’ll find a place where I can do more than just step, step, step. I could step step step float move my arms in the water sit just enough for my shoulders to become warm and relaxed and ready to sway with the waves. Maybe if I was far enough away from the dry sand, I could remember the lessons of the walking, and prepare for the change of perspective, change of view.

What I’m doing now, how I am existing now is not working. I feel a little of my soul weakening the more I walk in this dry, familiar sand. But the ocean, it scares me. Soon I will have to decide whether my soul or my fear is stronger.