Desiring Intentionality in the New Year
“Intentional days create a life on purpose.” - Adrienne Enns
Slower mornings, egg frittatas, and coffee still warm to the lips. Much of my life up until this point has been about financially surviving until I could finally work for myself. Until I could have enough time to muster up the courage and seek a life more fulfilling than the stories told in the formative construction of mine and so many others’ childhoods.
In 2018, after leaving an internship, I wrote a great deal about rest and creativity. After long periods of not having access to live in full freedom of determining my own schedule, living slowly was on my mind a lot. Easing back into the workforce was a sort of culture shock after spending nine months surrounded by middle schoolers teaching them how to love God and, in return, love themselves in a place where it felt like the world had already turned its back on them. It was like stepping into normalcy after never really experiencing it for the first time.
Now, I have entered a space much different than any I’ve ever known, and it’s not because of a global pandemic. Transitioning into working full-time as a grants consultant and creator felt like, for the first two months, living in a waking dream of all I’ve waited for in the last five years. It’s a space I found myself longing for, never knowing when it would arrive, and now that it has, I’m pinching myself into a constant reminder that this is my reality. Finally.
Before leaving my 9-5 job as a grant writer, I remember having a conversation with my executive director about working from home, my attempt at easing into a conversation about hybrid work environments and office flexibility. I mused on slow mornings, how the drive into the office dredged up drudgery instead of a peaceful routine. Of course, I was much kinder in my descriptions. I spoke of how my home office gave me more peace than an office I shared with other team members, who made it known that my presence wasn’t always welcomed. He entertained my thoughts briefly, and I knew before finishing my exposition on the positives of work/life/balance, that he wasn’t any closer to acquiescing to a desire that I and other employees had expressed over the course of the last two years.
A month or so later, when I drove home from my last day at the office, I remember shedding a couple of tears, wiping the corners of my eyes as I tried to maintain a speed of 60 mph on the highway. It wasn’t because I was going to miss this job. A place where I’d learned a lot but endured too much. It wasn’t because I was melancholic for what never was, but because on my last day, a woman told me my presence in that building made her feel less alone. That my smiling at her in the hallways brought her a sense of joy in a place she hadn’t felt for some time. This shocked me, pleasantly so, but made me feel such a sadness, because I know what it is like to exist in a place full of people and feel alone.
When I think back on this conversation, I’m drawn back to intentionality and how, in the smallest of ways, it makes big waves. A mini-goal of mine while working there was to learn to find pockets of joy, to make meaning in the halls, in the breakroom where I would make coffee or tea, and talk about my favorite shows I’d watched recently. It was a reprieve and a push for me to exist beyond the margins of my comfort zone. These are the moments I’m choosing to remember in this space of transition where I’ve become a party of one in the journey of consultation and contract work.
Prior to my recent change in employment status, this wasn’t the first time I’ve left a work environment where so many people, like myself, wondered what lay on the other side of taking a leap of faith. Mused on what kind of life exists outside of the ones we make for ourselves due to a lack of resources or a lack of trust of ourselves and those around us. It can be scary to lean into the uncomfortability of uncertainty, taking steps in the dark toward a thing we can’t see.
For me, the idea of leaving 9-5 security felt both freeing and frightening–like a controlled descent that has the capability to become a free fall. Now, that I’m living the kind of mornings I only dreamed of, I am aware of the blessing it is to reside in an answered prayer. Aware of the grace it takes to wield patience amidst difficult times that eventually lead to joy.
It may seem menial, writing about this seemingly minute thing–working from home and drinking coffee at the pace of my own will, but I love moving with time and not against it. Leaving my job has led to seeing how the hours pass differently, quickly, and with depth simultaneously, and I only hope to learn to make the most of every minute.
So, I write this newsletter in the hopes that time is being kind to you, gentler with every passing second as you seek whatever slow and intentional means to you.
Stay Creative, Beloveds
Antavia Mason
