10 weeks

So I have 10 weeks left in my job.

10 weeks of being CEO.  10 weeks of being the boss.  10 weeks of "the buck stops with me".

10 weeks of stretching myself into new shapes. 10 weeks of being pushed and prodded and manipulated into new ways of being in the world.  10 weeks of winging it and working it out as I go along.  10 weeks of feeling like I have to know everything and 10 weeks of feeling like I never know enough.

10 weeks of feeling drained, empowered, cynical, hopeful, driven, burnt out, meaningful, pointless, motivated and utterly peeved...

10 weeks of feeling that my life has a purpose and a routine - all-be-it one I have frequently wanted to chuck in the nearest swamp.

10 weeks to find a way to walk away feeling like I did all I could.

10 weeks to find a way to walk away not feeling like I leave behind a house of cards, and 10 weeks to accept that I cannot control what happens after I walk away - in fact there is not all that much I can control between now and then either.
3 weeks of active management left, then 7 weeks to wrap up all the lose ends and produce a mountain of words on paper.
Words on paper will be my legacy.
Words on paper which, in my optimistic moments, I trust will translate into making the world a little easier for some people.
Words on paper which won't change a whole lot in an obvious way, but may just be foundation that makes the difference between dark and light for some people.

10 more weeks of putting words on paper... before my next adventure into arranging different words in different orders on different bits of paper.
I must hold up my hands and blindly hope it all matters somehow.

10 weeks until everything changes again.

21 Inner Beauty Inspirations #21

21.  Finish what I begin.
ARG!  I have never been good at finishing... I avoid endings.  Relationships, assignments, jobs, sentences...I don't like full stops.  I avoid going to bed at night, my fridge is full of jars with the last bit still in them, my shelves are full of half read books and my life is driven by the next new challenge rather than finishing the one I am living at the time... I am a huge fan, you may have noticed, of the "..."  I like to leave things open, open to the possibility of continuation...
I was planning on finishing my 21 posts on inner beauty with a retrospective of the other 20 posts, under the them "learn from the past"...but I couldn't bring myself to do it.  I noticed I was avoiding it... And I realised - this typifies one of my great life challenges.  I love beginning, and avoid ending.
This has been a double edged sword.
In some situations it has brought me rewards - I have hung on, with patience and fortitude, and the rewards have been that things and people are still in my life that wouldn't have been otherwise...this blog is one example!
On the other side of the sword it has meant that I have left things unresolved, hung on too long, left doors open that should have been closed, been cowardly, and this has sometimes brought sadness and frustration to myself and other affected people.
And the big downside is the blow that it strikes to my sense of accomplishment in life.  I don't finish things - I get to the very last stage, and I lose momentum.  Diets, tasks, goals... so often just short of accomplished.  I am so often "going well" until I am not anymore.
I have spent many many hours, and a lot of therapy money, trying to work on this in myself.  What is my resistance to finishing?  Is it addiction to the joy of new beginnings, do I get bored, do I fear admitting that is "as good as it gets", do I feel inadequate and always hope for more time to meet expectations, was I never really committed to the outcome??...blah blah blah....I think its time to stop asking the question "why" and just start doing it.
So as I FINISH this challenge, I acknowledge that it was tempting to either never post the 21st post... or to keep going, to decide to go to 100..... but I wouldn't finish it and it would be another thing on my list of unfinished self challenges - so I won't.
I have enjoyed this, and I have learned from it, and now it is finished.  I do feel slightly more beautiful on the inside for undertaking this process... and I have reinvigorated my sense of commitment to self improvement.
My new self challenge... JFI.  "Just Finish It".