What I'm learning from devotion this month is... you can only devote yourself to one or two things. Tops.
Devotion is not a thing that you can do for everything and everyone who wants a piece of you.
Devotion is "all in", it's laser-focus, it's put-the-phone-down, look-at-the-person-talking.
For a year or so now, since I started working with Tiffany Han last year, I've been in a process of figuring out what I want to be devoted to, and not only that, but how to actually devote myself to it. I remember around this time last year, deciding to stop writing "Dream Big Cape Breton," the blog I had created and sustained for three years. I remember finally leaving a board of directors I was on, that I had wanted to leave for the past two years. I remember feeling that I was so, so sick of the feeling of frantic.
It's been a year and it's been, I see now, a slow, piece-by-piece getting to this point where I have only a few things on my plate. I kind of interrupted myself in that process, in the spring, when I crowdfunded $5000 and took a business program with Tiffany and Michelle. Life actually got busier. But I'm glad that that happened. It was worth the hustle.
But I'm glad the hustle is done now. I've got my website, and my little home on the web for my business. And I'm going to slowly grow it... but not at a crazy pace. "Sane, healthy pace" is my intention for 2016. I have a day job. I like that day job. I want to put energy in to this business, certainly. But not at the expense of other things, like my relationship. Like my garden. Like my friendships. Like my "white space".... that delicious time to myself to read, or just stare off into space.
Last weekend I got rid of the Dream Big Cape Breton Facebook group. I manually deleted over 1100 people. Then I culled my Facebook "Friends". I had over 1100 of those, too. I cut it back to just under 200. It was tough, shedding this public skin I had worn for years. I miss it a bit, in the week since. I miss feeling like I have 'influence', whatever that is. (Talking into the void, is what it really is.)
But I don't miss having to turn my Facebook feed off because I was so overwhelmed by the stuff floating in that river. I'm glad it's back on now, and that the things I see in it are only from close friends, family, loved ones, when I choose to sign in.
I was used to running one step always ahead of my schedule, like a villain chasing me. Like my To Do list was a tetris puzzle -- you have to keep doing stuff, so that when new stuff gets added, there is room for it.
Over the past year, I've slowly learned through trial and error how to have more white space than commitments.
It's not easy (there are many things that I'm not devoted to, like the dishes, for instance, or cleaning my floors, or volunteering in my community, and I feel sometimes that I "should" be doing more) but it's ease-making. It's the antidote to frantic.
It's devotion to myself.