Over the years, I’ve often heard people remark that change is hard. I’d smile and nod but think, “Not for me it isn’t. I 
love change.” What I meant by that is that I love movement, variety, experiences that challenge what I had previously held to be true and the sense of renewal that change often brings. That feeling of starting over and the heightened creativity that comes with it. I draw energy from traveling, moving houses, the chance to do something innovative and experimental at work.
But I’m getting to know the other side of change, the hard side, and I have to say it’s not my favorite. If this is what the change-is-hard folks have been talking about all this time, I so get it. Change is fun, exhilarating, refreshing. It can also be uncomfortable, unsettling and foundation-quaking.
I network online with small business owners, many of whom have kids—and some of whom who, like me, have kids who are not yet school-age who are at home with them. My assumption is that many of them had more traditional outside-the-home jobs before having kids and then made the decision like I did to forge a new normal for the sake of their family. I wonder, though, if they went through any periods of yuck. Working in a regular job with a fairly prescript definition of success has its advantages—one of them being that, when things don’t go well one day, reflecting about why and what to try the next day is straightforward. I am finding that to be so different out here on my own.
Maybe it’s the fact that I have about 15 irons in the fire and an 8 month old daredevil who is learning to crawl just to get closer to the flames. I felt like I was not accomplishing enough each day, so I started writing a more detailed daily agenda to help focus my work. The result of that has been that I am now acutely aware of the tasks I don’t get done, and they’re sitting there on a list for me the next day. Along with the next day’s, of course.
Building something from scratch is quite an experience. I feel like the architect and the builder sometimes, and I feel like I spend as much time redrawing the blueprints as I do creating something that will ultimately form part of my finished product. Our timeline is on point – the Kickstarter campaign is ever closer to its launch, and the app and website development are in progress (right now!), so I certainly have something to show for the time I’ve spent here.
But, in addition to working my way across the timeline of what I need to accomplish before our official Growing Gratitude app launch, there’s another long-term goal to add to the list: make my peace with the hollowy, heart-quickening feeling that this kind of endeavor – and the change it brings with it – inspires. Learn to recognize the feeling, call it, then minimize it and move on. We’ve got work to do.
