the only constant

If you know me, you’ll know that I’ve worked in the gig economy for a long time. I’ve had a variety of odd jobs, casual jobs, contract work, and run my own business.

Last month, I quit one of these casual jobs that I’d had for five years. It wasn’t that I needed the job — but I held onto it like a safety blanket.

Gig life is a trade-off. On one hand, there’s a whole lot of flexibility (hello midday yoga classes and random road trips!). On the other hand, there’s not much security. Some weeks were overflowing with work, while others were simply a tumbleweed. This casual job provided me with a trickle of consistency during those quieter periods.

Out of curiosity, I went looking through my calendar — and this time five years ago, I was going for the interviews for that casual job. Soon after, the shifts began filling up my weeks. I could see it was one of the only fixed points in a life otherwise filled with running my own business and chasing gigs.

Fast forward to today, and my calendar is FULL.

Over the last five years, I’ve built a career centred on teaching yoga, meditation, and Pilates — the perfect blend of security and freedom I once dreamed of. Yet, out of fear, I held onto parts of my past long after I’d outgrown them (made painfully clear thanks to my Google calendar).

There’s an analogy one of my teachers shared many years ago, drawn from the Buddhist teaching of impermanence. Trying to hold on to anything in life is like trying to stay still in a rushing stream by holding onto a stick. The stick may feel more tangible and solid than the rushing water, but it is being controlled by the stream just as much as you are.

The truth is, the only constant in life is change.

This week, I finally let go of that stick. And when I looked around, I realised the stream had already carried me to exactly where I’d been hoping to arrive all these years.

And now… there is a whole lot more space in my Google Calendar.

So, to sign off this newsletter, I’ll leave you with this thought:

What sticks are you still holding onto, just for the sake of holding on?

— Karen Gruber