It all started with a map.

I love maps. This was one of those old fashioned sepia-toned maps that I’d used as inspiration for my treasure hunt. I cut a piece of it and glued it to my art journal.  On one corner of the map, I stuck a photo of a woman in a safari hat looking like she was keen for adventure. It all fit so well – an explorer seeking adventure on a map of the world.  I wasn’t sure what to do next, but the beginning made me happy. I saw myself emerging on the page.

Grabbing a paintbrush and some paint, I started painting over the map. First there were light, translucent circles, but soon they became big, dark swirls. Angry looking swirls. Like a series of ugly hurricanes moving into the shorelines of hundreds of vulnerable islands on the sepia map. One of the swirls encircled the explorer woman.  She clung to her corner of the page, lost and alone in the darkness.  I don’t know where the swirls came from or why they showed up looking so dark and angry, nearly obliterating the map. I just let it happen.

I stared at it for awhile, disappointed that what started out as an exploration into the traveler in me had turned ugly. I didn’t know what to do next so I left it alone.  I considered tearing it up and starting again.

The next few days, I’d occasionally glance at that page in my journal, not sure what to do with it. It didn’t feel right to tear it out, but it looked unfinished and ugly and it made me feel unsettled when I looked at it.

I abandoned the art journal in my studio and put it out of my mind.

Sometime during the course of that week, I realized that an old familiar feeling that had been my companion for the past 6 months was beginning to occupy my every waking moment. Again.  I’d been here before – so many times. Restlessness. Dissatisfaction with the status quo. An unsettling addiction to change and revolution. A deep and burning need to wander to new things and new places.

It’s mostly in my work that I feel the restlessness crop up every few years, but it can also overtake other areas of my life.  I have boxes full of unfinished art and craft projects that I’ve abandoned whenever I got bored.  I could give you a tour of my bookshelf and point out all the passions I’d poured over in various phases of my life and eventually lost interest in. I could show you stacks of photos of all the countries, cities, parks, beaches and out-of the way paths that have given space to my wandering feet.  I have a history of changing jobs every three years. I just don’t know how to settle down. It’s not that I don’t know contentment – it’s just that it never lasts.

Once again this same restlessness was consuming me and this time, it was making me angry. Why couldn’t I settle down like other people?  Why did my passion have to shift every few years like a temperamental wind? Why couldn’t I just keep enjoying this job that I’d loved so much in the first few years? Why couldn’t I just focus on one interest and pursue excellence in it rather than getting bored before I was proficient?  Why did I keep wanting more, more, MORE? Why was I so damn fickle?

I felt like I was wrestling with my own dark shadow and I wasn’t winning.

The frustration started affecting me physically. I was exhausted and even though I slept fairly well at night, I never felt rested.  My head started to ache, and my concentration nearly vanished.

I took a sick day, hoping a little rest would help me get past this malaise.  But I couldn’t sleep, even when everyone else had left and the house was quiet.

Finally I went down to the studio and sat staring at the abandoned art journal. I flipped it open to the swirling map.  Something clicked in me and instantly I recognized what was on the page. These angry swirls represented my own dissatisfaction with the restless wanderer in me.  Even though I love the fact that I’m a world traveler, and often refer to myself as a “happy wanderer” (hence the happiness when I first started the page), there’s a part of me that feels deeply flawed because of this inability to find contentment with the status quo for any length of time. It was causing an ugly hurricane of emotions in my soul.

I sat there in silence for awhile and just let myself feel the conflicting emotions.  Happy and sad, angry and excited, passionate and bored.  It all swirled in me like those restless hurricanes.

Then suddenly, something changed. Like a gentle breeze, peace came and the storm settled. In the breeze I heard the Spirit whisper “you are called to be a wanderer. Your restlessness is your beauty.”

I was getting it all wrong! This was a gift, not a flaw. This restlessness in me was the work of the Artist, not an ugly mistake. I wasn’t supposed to deny it or try bury it beneath layers of resistance – I was supposed to embrace it and follow it!

I picked up a paintbrush and dipped it in white paint. Over the angry swirls I wrote the words that came to me. “You are called to be a wanderer.” “There are answers in the eye of the storm.” And “Excavate. Explore. Navigate. Initiate.”  At the centre of each hurricane, I painted a tiny dot of light. In the centre of the woman’s heart, I painted a tiny, happy white swirl.

Finally it was finished and it was okay. I was okay.

I started the next page of my journal – this time with bright yellow paint and a fun photo of a girl reaching for a cookie jar. The next photo represented a dream I have – a place where I’ve wandered and want to take other people to some day (that story is for another post). I painted hands reaching out for this second “cookie jar”. The only word that showed up this time was “Reach!”

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