It's cold outside. Bitterly cold. Any-moisture-in-your-nose-freezes-when-you-breathe-in kind of cold. Everything stands still or is slow moving...only the warm air out of the furnace vent blows out effortlessly. I love the view outside - everything looks beautiful and magical - but one step outside and the cold saps all my energy and I grow numb.

I hit the pause button on my journey for a little while, cruising in survival mode. As an event planner, the level of stress to create and deliver a major event always escalates to a frenzied pace. I do what I have to do to get through it, and at a certain point I would surrender to that feeling of robotic numbness. I would lose myself in work, feeding off of the adrenaline. Like the air out of the high-efficiency furnace, I've always wanted to give the impression that no matter the challenges and issues, I could make everything look beautiful and magical. Some would say I am a workaholic, but I don’t know how to work hard AND play hard. I only know how to function. 

Secret Reveal #6: I stay busy as a way to escape and hide from my reality and my secrets. 

Work, I could control and manage things. Work, I could remain emotionless. Work, I could validate my sense of self-worth. Work, I would always find the positive and make things happen. After all, work is one of my holes in my sidewalk - it's a safe place, it's a comfortable place. But when my work environment became its own chaotic and demoralized cosmos, I felt the hole beneath me open up further, leaving a trail of overwhelming disorder and confusion - a sort of tossed salad of reason, reality, deceptions, disillusions, misconceptions, red herrings, logic, emotions, thoughts, beliefs, and anxieties. I hate being in this state and craved the return of the blanket of cold numbness. It would have been so easy to slip back and escape into the old me.

But I can't. I've changed.

I was very much aware of my past shadowing behind me, but I wasn't able to shut it out or shut down like I used to. Its presence was clearly felt, demanding to be acknowledged. Unfortunately I didn't have the self-discipline or energy to put the emphasis on my own needs. So work would creep in and take up its space, but this time, I felt a gnawing resentment towards work and I became aware of my escape responses. The first was to flee - I coped by eating and smoking cigarettes to try and settle the chaos within me, or I cleaned and found ways to stay busy to detach from myself. The other was to fight - I had the impulses to scream, shout, kick, punch, damage things but instead channeled all that tension by helping staff on the snow slides. 

But nothing really worked - I couldn't shake off the feeling and guilt that I was once again trying to escape from my reality. In a TED video,  Ash Beckham gives a talk We're all hiding something. Let's find the courage to open up. 

My hole in the sidewalk is my version of the closet. Ash Beckham also refers to three principles to get out of the holes and closets:

1. Be authentic: Being honest with myself is always the hardest conversation to start and listen to, as well as permitting myself to be vulnerable to let the authentic self express itself.
2. Be direct: I'm better at acknowledging things, but still working on finding my voice to express things - I often like to use analogies, but also learning to better understand the effectiveness of being direct.
3. Be unapologetic: To stop worrying about what other people think and the perceived expectations are notions I struggle with, but slowly getting better at giving myself permission to do things for me.

Earlier this week, I finally had a moment to myself and I took the opportunity to close the door to work...I ignored it knocking at my door or its repeated calls to be let in. I sat quietly in the Ikea cafeteria enjoying the stillness as I looked out the window and watched all the vehicles speeding on the highway.  And then I acknowledged what I had been feeling for the past little while - I wanted off the highway. 

I’m done escaping from my past and my secrets. I'm through with just functioning. I am ready to step out and live. And the means to achieve this - I can’t be an event planner for much longer.  It's time to move on.