Liberation

My friend Jennifer emailed a few days ago saying she was "liberated" from her job, as they were cost cutting the most senior level positions...hmm, always a wise move (!). When I talked to her she sounded really good because she received a nice severance through the summer, and she was pretty miserable there. She wanted to leave.

"Liberation" was the term that our friend and former colleague Dave used to say about layoffs, which would always make us laugh, though in a single swoop, shift the focus from lack and regret to freedom and opportunity.

Dave was highly skilled in "less talk, more action" and would frequently get impatient with a lot of chatter and what he called talkie talk and meetings to have meetings. This was a guy who would mandate one word statuses on accounts to really make you think about what the 'status' was, and get to the heart of the matter -- "Muddled." "Tailspin." "Political." "TV." "Beer" (he ran spirits accounts) -- or propose things like having status meetings without chairs.

Though I am not sure I truly appreciated it at the time, he was operating on his own plane, and frequently impatient with idle chat among us mere mortals. "Talking about a revolution" he would say, echoing the Fab Four -- but not squaring their shoulders, raising the bar, grabbing the bull by its horns and ready to leap to the next adventure as adeptly as he always did.

It's been my experience that liberation from anything - job, relationship, home, any type of major change - comes with an ample amount of being slightly freaked out, walking the tight rope of faith and trying not looking down. When I was in the midst of relocating from California, I remember that feeling of just trying to move forward, sometimes one baby step at a time, trying to keep a brave face but completely a wreck on the inside. After a long day of logistics, I had gone out to a wine bar with Christa, a former Sambazon colleague, and she said "Are you so excited to be moving to New York?" and I just looked at her, "excitement" being the last thing I was feeling. She said, "Just walk through the door." And eventually I did.

I sold my car yesterday -- and went from what I thought would feel like liberation and instead felt pretty empty, as I returned home with the CDs that were in my car that I always loved listening to, smelling the ocean breeze while on the Coast highway, and to and from LA on the 405. Several Sambazon CDs, The Fraulein Mix, and the original California mix that Dave sent to me in 2004 with the one word "Welcome." I felt like I was letting go of California all over again.

Christa and I had been out of touch for several months - she's now down in Peru running a yoga practice for 6 months - though she had reached out this week to say hello and I had reminded her of her "Walk through the door" wisdom. She replied yesterday "I think we walk through doors every day."

"We're going to the future, people, are you coming??" Dave would say, clapping his hands impatiently.

One day, I will learn to run through doors.