For the past 9 1/2 months I’ve been digging deep to uncover the path I want to take next. I have a background in freelancing so since I left my stable, nonprofit professional career back in July, I naturally slipped right back into the hustle.

To be clear, before I left my job I did secure a 6 month contract that would provide me with steady part-time income for the remainder of the year. This was new for me because 5 years ago I would have easily left without a plan or net in place. I’m in the middle of the project right now that happens to be all about supporting business owners of color.

By definition, acclimation is “the process in which an individual organism adjusts to a change in its environment (such as altitude, temperature, humidity, photoperiod, or pH), allowing it to maintain performance across a range of environmental conditions.”

Does “allowing it to maintain performance across a range of environmental conditions” mean getting to a place where one can positively maintain performance? Or does it mean simplymaintaining under the set of conditions, even if at a low-level?

Over the past three weeks, to the day, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking and breathing. What a gift being able to get away from work and home has been. I truly didn’t think it was available to me, but after talking it through with a few beloveds, I was convinced that simply asking for what I needed couldn’t hurt. 

The place I’ve been staying has been filled with so much comfort, love and support — I could totally stay longer. And I’m also feeling really good, calm and prepared to venture back. This has been time very well spent.

I know there are tools and tricks for training a crazy brain that doesn’t know how to help itself, but I sure wish there was an actual switch.

Flick — quiet brain. Flick — meditation brain. Flick — contemplation brain. Flick — productive work brain.

Left to my own devices, I’ll catapult myself down a rabbit hole of back and forth wondering about this, that, the other thing and this again. It’s really hard to hone in on one theme and dig in. I imagine this is how it is for everyone. But if so, how does anything ever get done?

For fifteen years, maybe even twenty, I’ve been dreaming, thinking and wondering about the Motor City. I cannot recall if it was a movie or a book or what, but something has had me fascinated by this place in a huge and inexplicable way for a long time. Today I am fulfilling the fantasy.

I drove in on I-96 on what became a gloriously partly cloudy instead of heavy and gray Saturday and beelined it for the Eastern Market, opening day for the season. My timing was juuuust right to catch the final few vendors packing up.

With nothing but time and the highway ahead, I’m feeling many emotions. Excited, anxious, worried, relieved, inspired, eager. 

I arrived on this journey after one of the most overwhelming emotional experiences of my life.

It was a Sunday evening this past October and we were at our neighborhood brewery having dinner