Like many light workers long drawn to New Thought and the esoteric, my career has taken many twists and turns. Not that I have been tossed upon the seas of life any more than the next person, just that I never turned down an opportunity to shake things up...
In Carlos Wayne Anderson’s New Year talk at Unity of New York, he suggested keeping in mind what, as children, we dreamed of being when we grew up, inviting us to remember that in our innocent, energized minds, the sky was the limit. He just about had me in one of the examples he gave, a movie star and a doctor (and I’ll add stunning spy and femme fatale, though I had little idea what that even entailed).
As time went on, a triple whammy of calculus, chemistry and fainting at the sight of blood made med school out of the question, and calling up the CIA one day and asking how to “sign up” did not inspire their interest, except possibly in the idea that I might be trying to spy on them. Rejection is protection, my idea of healing would never have fit into today’s medical workplace, and I probably would not have liked killing anyone or getting killed myself.
I did maintain an interest in performing, ending up with a degree in Theatrical Directing & Design because my voice was weird and I had to try everything. After college I designed some, produced a little, started directing, and dealt with actors not listening to me because I was so young. This made me decide to just do it myself, so I took a voice class and started acting again. I was deemed pretty good at all of it, and no one was more surprised at that than I was.
Then, something happened in one of the voice classes -- it evolved into a heated discussion of radical acceptance of the moment and, as Barbara De Angelis would say, my cosmic alarm clock went off. I was always a mystic seeker as well as a decent tarot reader, but this time I KNEW the feeling of expansion I had during that conversation had changed the course of my life.
But I had another life, where there needed to be jobs and gyms and relatives and boyfriends, so I kept quiet about it, as I had done about various experiences of something greater throughout my life. There was no safe place for that. And I have to say that those jobs and relationships taught me a great deal about business, human nature, and even myself. Couplings especially really can be for a season, a reason or a lifetime. The reasons can be your own or a total surprise, the seasons can leave sweet memories, and as for the lifetime, well, that anchors the realization that there is nothing before it you would want to change.
As a teenager I dabbled in fiction, and one particular “reason” relationship pulled me back into writing. Within a year I was an active participant in Francis Ford Coppola’s Zoetrope site, writing, reviewing, networking and publishing short fiction between temp gigs as an executive assistant. I got it - I WAS a WRITER! And in the wake of 9-11, a citizen journalist on the site…
And that was...what I was doing when I fell in love again, with a visual artist, illustrator and designer. He loved painting, animals, and magazines. Soon, Mark decided to publish an art zine online with a colleague, and of course, I wanted to write! But no, only practicing visual artists could write for this site. I said fine, I can do that (theatrical design required art chops, and I could always draw.)
My first efforts involved practically exploding my printer by printing texts on mylar, then drawing on them with sharpies. Further explorations moved into assemblage, with acquired objects adding dimension to the concept. I sold them in charity shows. No need to expand, I was only doing this to write! Then he got me my first digital camera…
I had some really cool looking pears from the Greenmarket, and I took quite a few shots. Somehow, despite my adjustments, my vision of the pears eluded the camera. So I grabbed a sharpie and a little notebook and started drawing them. When I showed it to Mark, he got me tons of materials, really big paper, and said, keep going! A year later a pair of them were in a Museum show. I was an overnight success again, and I had only been drawing since the age of 2… wait, how does that add up?The magazine had a great run. One day, I saw that a friend and colleague had a Huffington Post blog and I said to Mark, I want one too. A day later we got a call from their editor, we had been highly recommended! We covered art in NYC for a bit and let the magazine evolve. Right when it was all about to morph into a total video/social media phase, everything changed…
Mark left this plane in 2012, and much of my energy for art went with him. I still believe, as I have since I first played as a child at the Met Museum, that art is so much more than we give it credit for, and that artists are heroes in their own way. But a spark was gone, and after running the race on empty for a while, I dropped. I still love the community, but I did not see myself in it full time any more.
I guess my Cosmic Alarm Clock was just on snooze for 20 years, because good creative friends saw I was a bit lost and started to recommend sources for New Thought teachings, including people, like Barbara De Angelis and Wayne Dyer, whose books I had read in the 80’s and 90’s, as well as Abraham Hicks, and important influence on my work!
During a year of intense study and practice, including a certification in Reiki, the idea crept in that my own spiritual leadership and lifelong desire to heal were on a road I had not yet taken, and it was calling loudly. A sudden experience of the beyond while sitting under an ancient tree spurred me to launch a blog that afternoon, and from that point forward the revelations, and the writings, kept on coming. But there was something else…
I still wanted that part-time or temp job to get me through, and even though the job market had changed drastically I actually found what I thought was a good one,and I did it well. Unfortunately, a micro-managing supervisor had a history of being abusive and did not really know their job, so they tried to make me miserable at every turn. Somehow I managed to get REALLY good at it and something awoke in me, a desire to prove that I could succeed in the corporate environment. I started getting special projects and more responsibility, neglected my blog, and began to visualize that life would not be so bad if I just sold out for a while, and did not have to be ‘the assistant” any more -- after all, I was an overnight success, wasn’t I?
I knew somewhere inside I was trying to repair an old crack in my ego that needed to be released, and yes, the universe confirmed that! Bad management has consequences, and despite my efforts to point out problems projects stopped coming, there were layoffs, and my hours were cut to nearly nothing.. At this point I realized it was time to go, confirmed when I overheard an executive on the phone, falsely trashing a colleague to the CEO. I had taken the bait and briefly opened my self-worth to a very toxic culture, perhaps even becoming a little toxic myself! It still scares me that I fooled myself when I really thought I knew better, but our mistakes are one way we grow...
At present I am still the assistant -- my own! I’m an excellent and lovable boss, or a demon to work for, depending on what we are up to. I write, perform, produce, design. collaborate and organize as needed, so I guess all those turns were not so twisty after all. Writing, podcasting, live videos, teleconferences, personal appearances -- so many ways to reach out! And sometimes, dealing with the technology that delivers everything these days, I channel Mark’s spirit and somehow get through, because he loved all this stuff.
It can be a shaky world -- we need to keep healing and growing. I believe that something I have held in my heart for a lifetime will find its way to be part of that -- overnight, of course!
Linda DiGusta is an intuitive coach and writer who creates podcasts, meditations, live performances and more! Find her New Age 2.0 (c) practice platform, “The Superhero’s Way” on social media and play the podcasts at https://www.spreaker.com/show/thesuperherosway and coming soon, https://www.spreaker.com/show/splashcasts .
Images: Header and Butterfly (c) the author, mural detail by Mark Wiener.
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