Because I am a sensitive-creative type, I always found places like institutions and offices to be like foreign lands....some of these places are very temperature controlled and bland looking. People tended to wear different kinds of clothes - clothes that needed ironing and seemed to lack movement or flow. In fact the whole environment of these places appeared very still and quiet, but not peaceful. Peaceful to me means there is flow and motion, sometimes sound even if it's simply your own breath, distant bird calls, or traffic. Peaceful is quietly happy, content and working together. When I worked in hospitality it felt a bit like this to me because mostly everyone worked together, feeling bonded by the urge to help people, to be of service, the strange working ours often at night, and the sense that you were working outside the rules.
Now contemplating entering into working in an office, I was confronted by the initial fear that I may have to change myself and confirm to something I may not agree with....but things have changed. I realise that there is no way I am willing to forgoe who I am in all of my values and ethical approach to living, that somehow when I was younger I may have felt both unwilling to give these up and also feeling badly about this for some reason, that my strength comes from these values and ethics, and that this is what makes me a good worker and that I can be recognised and appreciated as such. I wish that I had believed in myself and what I bring with me when I was younger, as people probably saw this in me then but I still thought I had to hide it!
Now I am heading out there into the seemingly ordinary world beyond arts and community, but I cannot take the arts and community out of me, it will come through somehow and I will be right behind it!
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