The Slow Unravelling of Everything (including my clothes)
About 11 years ago I left my job as the manager of an arts centre in the north of England.
As my leaving gift, the staff and volunteers clubbed together and bought me a voucher for £75 for an outdoors shop.
They knew that what was happening next was that I was going travelling. A few weeks later, I walked into the shop looking to get some good walking boots.
There, right in the middle of the display, were a pair on sale that were reduced to exactly £75. No 99ps or anything. Exactly the amount of my voucher.
I took it as a sign.
11 years on, I still wear those boots.
But they’re starting to wear out.
Not only that - I’ve noticed my t-shirts seem to all be wearing out.
My wellies have a hole in them.
A couple of my shirts are a little frayed around the edges.
I look back on that phase around 11 years ago as a period of intense change: career, location, relationship and more were shaken up.
Mostly excitingly, but occasionally rather terrifyingly.
I like to look for patterns in my life.
Messages that might be being shared with me in unexpected ways.
God speaking to me in flowers, which I might miss if I was waiting for words.
Signs that, if I’m not careful, I might ignore.
And so it occurred to me, when noticing that my walking boots and wellington boots were both wearing out…
That my t-shirts had holes in them…
That my shirts are frayed around the edges…
It occurred to me that other things might be unravelling too.
And it turned out they are.
Practical ones: a sense of satisfaction with my wardrobe drifting away, unravelling.
Long-held expectations of what a birthday should be like unravelling and being rewritten.
Senses of possibility for the future seeming, in some cases, to unravel and be shown to be fanciful.
Not every part of life is unravelling, of course.
But some of it is.
Some deep shift in a sense of what life is, what it might be, where it might come from, where it might go.
Beliefs, ideas, plans.
One of my clients once noticed the use of the word unravelling and wondered if the opposite is ravelling.
Things have to unravel if we are to reweave them into something new.
The transition from one stage to the next is not always comfortable.
Sometimes we just have to surf the wave as best we can.
But it is one thing to surf a wave you have seen coming.
And another to find yourself being tossed over by it without even knowing you were in the sea.
So make sure to pay attention to the signs.
Even if it starts with the unravelling of your clothes.
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PS As well as my one-to-one coaching, I do leadership development work with organisations and teams. You can read about that and see many of the companies that have worked with me here: https://www.robbieswale.com/organisations-and-teams
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This is the latest in a series of articles written using the 12-Minute Method: write for twelve minutes, proof read once with tiny edits and then post online.
Buy the 12-Minute Method series of books, written 12 minutes a week over three years, here.