Digital Birdhouse
Hello my friend,
The last email I sent was on November 10th of last year. There isn’t some grand reason for the gap like a trip to Nepal to discover myself, or months in a hospital after injuries from saving multiple people from a house fire.
The gap really was because of a few changes I felt in myself and a worry that my weekly letters wouldn’t stay authentic.
The amount of people I send this to isn’t huge, but each of you actually means something to me.
I’ve known you for a while, work with some of you and are friends with others. I’ve laughed, cried and done just about everything else that has any value to me in life with many of you.
So with all of that being said, I didn’t want to risk my email coming through and being filled with my thoughts tainted with a sales pitch or other “hacks” that didn’t actually come from my heart.
So why the email now
I’ve wanted to re-start for a while now the emails, and many of you emailed me asking what the deal was or why I stopped (thank you).
I’ve had a few very painful months as I’ve followed some of my own advice and I am beginning to feel a bit like my old self again.
Putting is simply. I feel like I can share things that are working for me and lessons I’ve learned without it being overwhelming or difficult to the point of depression.
The lesson these past months have taught me
My hardest moment came when I finally decided I really wanted things to improve no matter the cost. It was a scary prospect. I don’t know what challenges you are facing in your life right now but I do know you have challenges. We all do.
I realized that to truly get things sorted, I had to actually want to know the answer. I had to be willing to listen, look, ask and receive the truth which as I found out was hard to swallow.
We inherently want to avoid the thing that is hardest to do but that we know we should. We instead substitute the hard thing for something also hard but not quite as hard. Then when we accomplish that thing, we celebrate and laud our accomplishments to ourselves to mask our feeling of failure.
I was doing this same thing.
With my business I had a couple of employees that really needed to be let go. Instead of doing that though, I spent a lot of time re-doing their work, having very light correction interviews and being the “nice guy” hoping for change.
I knew what I actually needed to do, but just couldn’t bring myself to do it.
The same held true with a few relationships. I knew who was using me, but I didn’t want to put my foot down and set some basic boundaries. So I continued to allow myself to be treated badly and would feel guilt when others told me I should vs. when I actually should.
So to finish up, I didn’t write letters for a bit only because I worried they would either be inauthentic or full of resentment, anger, sadness or a myriad of other emotions. I mean who wants to read that right?
Gratefully I’ve had a few months of breathing fresh air mentally and the freedom that comes with handling a few hard things is amazing.
I’m excited to get back into my writing and I hope you’ll still enjoy it!
Until next time,
~Joseph
p.s. One thing I’ve started again is my artwork. Check out my 20 X 8 map of Middle Earth painted in the office:
