I left a very large consulting client in March for two reasons:

Reason Number One: The work there no longer served me. That is, it did not stretch or challenge me in a way that gave meaning to my life (Note: I even wrote a song about it: Reference: “Baltimore” on my music CD.); and Reason Number Two: I wanted time to launch the CD properly and afterward, to grow and expand my personal retreat business.

So here I am in the afterward. For the first time since March, it hit me. What I have traded away to follow my heart has a value in the six-figures.

Does that feel heroic or just plain foolish? Depends upon when you catch me with that question. Today I wonder: What if I had continued to earn that money and taken a goodly part of it to give to my two philanthropic causes? They would have LOTS more money sooner than it will take for me to sell my music CDs and give them the proceeds. In that light, it indeed seems foolish.

And yet.

There’s Reason Number One to remember. Finding meaning in my work is all about a desire not to be a statistic. In a Cornell study of Varieties of Regret, most of us, about 70%, expressed regrets of INACTION when looking back on life. That is, steps not taken, things not done. Do you want to be one of those people? I certainly don’t. It’s what drives me to move through my fears and ignore the mind chatter that wants to tell me how foolish I was for leaving that large client.

What will be the price tag I am able to put on a life well lived? I imagine myself an old woman. My toothless smile stretches widely as I sit rocking in a chair, arms folded over my ratty blue sweater. I am a trifle smug, knowing that upon waking up in my forties, I didn’t cop out. I didn’t sell my soul. Knowing that I kept putting myself out there and being open to whatever appears.

And then there’s Reason Number Three: My music gets to live in the world. Each song is, in my view, a being – alive with story and emotion, vibrating in its own resonance. Each song can change our hearts, can shift us to a new place of awareness or understanding. And what a thrill it is to know with each purchase of a CD or an mp3 download, another person receives the product of my creation (or more aptly put: “The product of the Divine blowing into me the words and music I claim as my own”). Now that’s priceless.

So here I am today, feeling steadfast in this afterward. Yes, I’ve reefed in my spending sails a bit. No, I do not know what stormy seas await. Nor do any of us, be we doing meaningful work or otherwise.

I look into his youthful 71 year old face as he says, “The hardest part is getting quiet, isn’t it?” This, in response to my informing him that I too am a creative type: A singer-songwriter with a debut CD, Feed the Tribe. A CD only weeks off the injection molding replication machines.

Oh yes, Martin. Over and over again it’s the hardest part. He reaches into his knapsack and carefully selects a poem: Blue Lesson.

An excerpt: “how to come home again and again with what look like empty hands, the gift – and there is one, even when I don’t see, don’t listen – how to hold this nothing, loving its flavor, the scent”.[1]

Thank you, Martin Steingesser for your gift of beauty and insight.

On the heels of completing the artistic accomplishment of a music CD (a huge undertaking), and what by many accounts would be considered a successful launch – sold out CD Release, songs played on four local radio stations, and press galore – I am asking, “Now What?” And experiencing unsettledness, a lack of certainty about the ways my music is manifesting for some greater good. In short: I have to get quiet and BE, letting go the drive to DO for just a little while.

One would think I’d be better at getting quiet after experiencing the richness and honesty that emerges as a result. Songs have poured out of me at times like these, where I am simply holding the pen and staying out of the way. Why is it always a struggle to get to that wellspring, I muse. Because your mind fears what your inner voice will say. It doesn’t have control over that source. Bingo!

Perhaps it is because I crave the wisdom that lies there – in spite of how difficult it is to receive at times – that I host a retreat workshop entitled, “An Exploration with Women at the Edge”. It is a time-out-of-time experience with women who are pushing their own comfort zones; women who are changing the world in the way they uniquely can.

During the workshop, we explore what it means to hold the nothing — the not yet manifested — with intent and allowing. With grace. Or at least we TRY! As a host, I am also a full participant. Like the lead climbers on Himalayan mountain expeditions, I still have to do the work myself, even though I’ve done it before and I have a map of the terrain. Sometimes I’m better at it than others. One thing is for certain: I’m still learning to get quiet, to love the flavor of nothing.