and with that ...

Tomorrow begins a year-long jouney for me. I've enrolled in a Leadership Intensive Training program put on by the Arete Center. Up until today, it's been sitting in the back of my mind somewhere as something I'm looking forward to, in the forefront of my mind as something that I anticipate allowing me to make some pretty subtle, yet dramatic shifts and wading through my subconscious as something else entirely.

I really have very little idea of what to expect other than this is probably (hopefully) some of the hardest work I've ever done in my life and some of the most rewarding. This isn't like other leadership training programs where you are taught the mechanics of being a good leader. This is about deconstructing and removing all the barriers that you have to being the leader you want to be. I want to be. How will that happen? I can't say. But I trust the leaders to provide the space for this all to happen - they do it regularly in the other workshops they lead.

The real work, though, is in what I bring. How I commit to working on trusting myself. How I don't back down in facing the fear and insecurities that are sure to come up.

The reward will be this: (and here is where i pause as the words that want to come are flowery and don't make any real sense and i want to just break it down into solid, honest, tangible facts) ... the reward will be that I have confidence in myself such that I make things happen that I don't currently think I am capable of (but somewhere deep inside, know I can do). The reward is, then, not holding back. The reward is learning how to support others completely. The reward is building this amazingly cohesive group of people. The reward is learning more about myself. The reward is letting go of some of the bullshit stories I carry around about myself. And, probably, the reward is giving me a much greater opportunity of getting or creating the jobs/work I want to do in the world.

It all sounds so appealing, doesn't it? It will be a very interesting and intense year. There's no way to know what tomorrow brings, there are no promises that anything will shift for me. But I have faith in this. I have faith that this opportunity will, at the very least, create the container for me to practice tearing away some of these ill-forged self-restraints. And we'll see.

You'll have to tell me what you see different about me in a year, if anything.

In other news ...

Yes, I'm still totally [insert word that means something like, heart feeling like it's bursting open sometimes and melting in others, and feeling light with joy and laughing to myself a lot and sighing with big grins on my face even more often] about this new person in my life. In this short time, not only am I just totally loving getting to know who she is, but am also learning a hell of a lot about myself. It's an effort to not write only about this, but I strive for balance and paying attention to ALL the OTHER wonderful things in my life these days.

I will forever be curious about whether these are wonderful things that are 'happening to me' or if they are wonderful things that i am somehow 'making happen'. It's probably some combination of both ... some combination of being in the right place at the right time and being there because of who i am and the choices i've made in my life. And I'm not really talking about the debate between 'free will' and 'fate', though that's a small piece of it.

Anyway, it's time to start getting ready for tomorrow and get some sleep. I have an early breakfast date (yea!) and then 2 full days of the beginning of some kind of wonderful. (great movie from the 80's by the way ... hot chick drummer, what more could you ask for? okay, besides hot chick in truck or on motorcycle or with welding gear ... )

and with that ...