BlogHeader_May15Email

How do you get from where you are to where you want to be?

I’ve written a lot on this blog about the need for women to build new businesses – different kinds of businesses – if we hope to achieve a better balance in our workplaces and in our lives. But how does that happen? How do you live well in the world you have, even as you work to make a better one?

You live betwixt and between.

That’s what I’ve been doing. I spend my days moving between two worlds. First is what I have begun to call my “old world” – working independently to provide supply-chain management and large-program management consulting services, the way I’ve earned my living for a long time. Second is my “new world” – that of building Morf3D, a company of the type I’ve proposed women build in my GirlAuthentic blogs.

I’m spending 24-40 hours a week providing supply-chain and ERP implementation work, supporting a wonderful client I have worked with multiple times. I am also traveling and meeting with potential new partners and clients to help build Morf3D. It’s a common story you hear about many others who have started a new business: You use the current work to keep paying the bills and help fund the new business, “burning the candle at both ends.”

Living in both worlds leaves me feeling I’m not doing either very well. I am constantly working on one area while being asked to do something for the other, or thinking about the other. Some days it is exciting; other days it is exhausting.

And I’ve come to a conclusion: I just have to get comfortable with being in transition.

I know this will be part of the “story” of building Morf3D that I can share in the future with other women and men who I hope will also make the leap to build the kinds of companies we want to work in – companies that are involved in changing the world, in making our workplaces places we all want to be. But I also I have a feeling the anxiety, stress, and excitement of building Morf3D is going to be around for a while.  So, I better figure out ways to be with it.

And that’s not easy! Prior to this level of activity with Morf3D, I felt I was pretty good at quieting my mind, being still, relaxing. Now, I realize I have a lot more to learn about how to do this. Stillness has been a struggle – at a time when I need it the most.

But I realize something else too: Building Morf3D feels right. This is our chance to build what we have said we wanted to see in this world in terms of the opportunities we want to create and the type of company we want to give people a chance to work for. This is just the beginning of this journey.

It might be a lifetime journey. Does anyone who is involved in building something new ever feel “done”? Or do they just get comfortable continually building, knowing they are never done? Are we here only for the finish line – or is “betwixt and between” exactly where we ought to be?

What do you think?