April 28, 2020
P I V O T
There is this moment in basketball when you stop dribbling and you still have the ball, and maybe there is some pressure on you, like the opponent is right on you and you can’t dribble again (double dribble), you can’t take any steps (travel), you can’t shoot and the only thing you can really do is pivot. You keep one foot planted and the other you use to pivot, until you can see another option.
I feel like this time for all of us is a moment to pivot, to see what we are not seeing, to look up, down, left, right and pause and see what pathways we might not be seeing. When COVID happened, I was too busy, personally and professionally. I was rushing between being a mom and a business owner, constantly feeling torn between the two. Days rushed by, I was traveling too much, and I would catch myself wishing for a weekend at home. And then the virus hit and there I was at home with space, time, kids yelling, nerves spiraling, a business in transition, home workouts, zoom calls...and news of people dying.
At first, I tried to wrangle time, to make every hour accounted for, to fill time with schedules, home schooling and so on and our house was filled with me fighting the kids to learn in this new way. I would say a week after that, we as a family pivoted because it simply was not working and in that pivoting I learned that if something is making me and my family miserable, then what we are doing isn’t working.
In this pivoting, we found our business to get stronger - we became clear immediately on our strengths as team members and we each took the jobs we knew we would excel at and head down got to work. We also immediately looked at our values as a store and one of the biggest ones is to be part of our community, a team player and we let that guide our decisions, not only to align with public health officials, but also to pull together with our fellow community businesses - and so we reached far and wide and grabbed onto others who needed help and who also helped us. We saw an opportunity to genuinely talk about what we as a business were dealing with - the moral dilemma of our changed world while still running a business. I have never been more proud of our store.
I also noticed in our pivoting - there became space and how quickly we filled the space and part of me wants some of that space back. And so, I am pivoting and trying to allow for space to exist without needing to fill it. With space, has come more writing, more creativity, a greater sense of the business as a whole - by taking on roles I have not done such as fulfilling orders, receiving inventory, photographing and editing our store photos and so on.
It’s always surprising to me how often we find ourselves in situations where we thought life would look a certain way and then it doesn’t. I truly believe in the saying, “We make plans and the Universe laughs,” because it’s true, at any moment you can be derailed, side tracked, zig-zagged through the endless curves and waves of life. So the people who I look up to are the people who easily accept the change, and calmly react, shift, let go, learn and move on. They don’t expect things to go back to anywhere, but they have a level of calm reassurance that there will be a new place and we will land eventually. I am working on being more of that kind of person - living in a space with so many unknowns and pivoting to see what is possible.
So that’s where I am today, this moment, who knows tomorrow it might pivot and change, but for now here I am.
Where are you?
With love and the great courage to pivot.
Jen