There are people on YouTube that post videos of themselves living on a sailboat. They sail around to different parts of the world, sometimes anchoring in a harbor, and sometimes pulling into a marina. They all do a really good job of depicting life as endless adventures with a snorkel and a fresh fish at the end of the day.
It takes a lot of effort to remember that their lives (or the lives of anyone that shares on the internet) is not just what we see. To be on any journey requires long periods of not much happening. In movies where an odd grouping of folks find themselves lost in a jungle, they show the parts where they get attacked by a large mammal or where they have to swing from tree to tree. They never show the days of just walking through the wilderness. Just like how they don’t show the endless hours of sailing across empty seas in the sailing YouTube channels.
So, that’s what I’m feeling. I’m out at sea. The novelty of the adventure has worn off. I know logically that I’m doing something really amazing, and I would have never been able to do this had I stayed on land. I realize I’m in the boat. I’ve completely changed my situation. I’ve completely transformed as a person – I’ve woken up to my consciousness and I have faced the ugly realities of sitting alone with myself and being honest about what I see – I am on my journey of personal becoming.
But my journey has hit a quiet phase. I’m bored. I feel stuck between the old and the new. I am antsy and restless to achieve greater things. It’s like I have the vision, I know where I’m going, I know the steps I need to take to get there. But I’m bored and frustrated at being right where I am, in the middle of the sea – still on the adventure – but bored nonetheless.
I used to work for an organization that did fundraising for a capital project, and before you launch the big public fundraising campaign, you start with a quiet phase. This is where you seek donations from major donors – you pursue these gifts on a more personal level. There is intimacy in these asks. But it’s before the parties and the marketing and the big red thermometer showing your progress. Just like the quiet phase of a journey. You have to ask yourself to continue to invest in your own forward momentum. There are some elements that make a quiet phase of a capital campaign successful (that I found on the internet) and maybe I can learn from these:
- Develop a cohesive strategy – I have been trying to put together an approach for how to settle into the middle place. I think my challenge is to find JUST as much joy in this part of the adventure as I will feel once I have “accomplished” the next step. Hell, if we’re basing non-boredom on “accomplishing” something, I’ve done a ton of that over the last few years. Maybe the strategy is about how I define accomplishment. Today is just as much of an accomplishment as five years from now when one of my many dreams has materialized. I actually dreamed of today (well, a version of this freedom life I’m living) five years ago – and look at me living that dream now!
- Be purposeful – I think the goal is about continuing to leverage the time in the middle space to continue moving the plan forward. Identify the next right things and deliberately celebrate each step’s completion.
- Carefully identify your team – Oh, I’ve definitely learned this one! It’s soooooo important to make sure you have the right people around you. Find the folks you can be vulnerable with, who can push you, who can identify that you are in a slump and kick you lovingly in the pants.
- Engage in innovative ways – For me, every day is pretty much the same because I work from home. This is the hardest one for me. I get slumped really quickly because I interpret a lack of human connection as boredom and then that seems to morph really quickly into “I hate my job and I’m totally doing the wrong thing and everything is wrong and I have to fix this RIGHT NOW”. I think finding innovative ways to engage when you are in the middle place is probably the single most important thing. Otherwise, you really do feel slumped. I need to work on this.
- Draft a perfect case statement – Yo! Remind yourself why you are doing this! Make a vision board or a big poster for the room you spend the most time in. Consolidate your vision/goals/why you untied your lines (or are trying to) onto a visual aid and reference it every day. I have a lot of things hanging on my bedroom wall, but this isn’t one of them and now I know what I need to do.
- Close with a strong kickoff event – So, unlike a fundraising campaign, you probably won’t know when you’ve exited your quiet phase and transitioned into the next stage of your adventure, because adventures don’t work that way. So, create the events. I just finished two months of not drinking alcohol. I am going to the circus tomorrow night – and I will call that a strong celebratory event – right here in the middle of my long months at sea.
I like these tidbits of advice for myself. I hope you also find them useful. I guess the message is that even if we are in the middle, quiet phase of our journey, there is still activity – like the really important activity – that gets us ready for the next things. 50% – 70% of all donations are raised during the quiet phase of a campaign, so that might mean that the majority of the good stuff is actually going to happen while I’m sitting here thinking I’m bored.