orientation to the world

liz gilbert talks about the balinese sense of orientation to the world. she says the first question someone will ask you in bali is "where are you going?" and the second question is "where have you been?" it's an entire culture built around the notion of just knowing where you are.

when i gave our blog a title, i was just being funny. we'd been talking so much about the need for a gps (or not). husband had just given you a map and a compass for christmas, instead of the little pink garman nuvi you wanted. but, now i realize the title resonates on a deeper level as well.

here at the end of 2007/beginning of 2008, i feel that i'm definitely stopping and taking the temperature of my life and asking myself where i am and where i'm headed. it seems that you have been doing the same over recent months. where are we and where are we headed? and how do we even know how to begin answering those questions?

i hope that i'm headed for more balance in my life--that's why eat, pray, love speaks to me the way it does. balance is what liz was searching for as well. you read all the time in the newspapers about having a work-life balance, but i've come to realize over the past couple of months what they're talking about. it IS important to make time for both...tho' i prefer to think of it as work-home balance. and i intend to have more of it in 2008. when there is a chance, i want to prioritize home, whereas for nearly 3 years, i prioritized work. and my life got very out of balance, until there was nothing left for home, because i was using all of my energy at work. somehow i lost my orientation to the world and no longer knew where i was.

i feel i'm already on the way to figuring out where i am these days...a big part of it is creativity...blogging, painting, knitting, scrapping, making earrings. there was definitely a yawning, creative black hole in my life over the past couple of years. i won't let that happen to me again. i'm coming to realize that knowing where you are is actually about the choices you make. and making them in a conscious way, rather than just letting them roll at you and hoping they don't crush you. i did far too much of that in my work life. thoughtful choices are key to balance and your orientation to the world. and by thoughtful, i mean being conscious about them and about the fact that one is making a choice. we make choices all the time--where we work, what we accept from our workplace, who we hang out with, how we spend our time, what we read, what we watch, what we listen to, what food goes into our mouths. i want to be more conscious about all of that. and thereby have a much better idea of where i am...

how about you?