GNT #183: Comfortable chains

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read time: 2.5 minutes

 "Those who don't move won't notice their chains."

I came across this quote last week and it stuck in my gut like Minnesota State Fair food.

Mmmm. Yum... (shakes head...) Back to the quote.

Not noticing your chains. That was me for a long time.

I liked stability. I liked it before kids, before there was any obvious reason to like stability. I tend to be risk averse by default. I'm convinced that's the reason my brain doesn't want me to do a real cartwheel.

I liked knowing what my week would look like. I liked the comfort of being given clear direction. I liked the feeling that I was doing what I was supposed to be doing.

Today I want to talk about the parts of your life you may have stopped questioning. Not because they're wrong. Because you've stood still long enough to stop seeing them. And how to tell which ones you'd still choose, if you looked again.

Let's dig in.
 

I wish going out on my own was my idea. It wasn't. Someone else saw it in me first, and said so. (Thanks, RaNae, over winter break in St. George 2020). Then it sat there and just percolated.

And once it did, I started noticing what I'd never questioned before.

Like how strange it felt to be paid by a clock. To stay at my desk until a certain hour because some unseen rule said that's what you do, finished work or not.

This isn't a complaint.

That steady paycheck served me. It gave me a place to learn, to try things and get them wrong, to be part of a team, to belong to something I could help shape. It was exactly what I needed for that stretch of my life. And for someone else, right now, it still might be.

But my questioning really started there. And it didn't stop with the clock. It turned into a bigger question.

What did my time actually mean to me?

The last couple of summers started to answer it. We took the kids to both edges of the US map. The westernmost point of the country last summer. The easternmost point this summer. It was a lot and it took a lot of sacrifice to get there. But we did it because we could.

For years I thought the goal was money. Earn enough, and I'd finally do what I wanted.

Then I was standing at the far edge of the country with my kids, doing exactly what I wanted. And I hadn't needed to be rich to get there.

(But don't get me wrong, I'm certainly earning well in the process.)

I don't need to be rich. I want to be free.

My awareness of unintended limits showed up in my career first. Yours might start somewhere else entirely. A routine, an identity, a rule you stopped seeing a long time ago.

None of this is an argument against routine. Routines are good. A good habit is a gift, a choice you make once and then let carry you.

The chains are the other kind. The routine you never really chose, the thing you inherited and kept, until you couldn't see it anymore.

I think the question for today isn't whether to break your chains.

Maybe it's just:

Would you still choose it today?

I'm always rooting for you. See you next week.

-Colleen

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