I am Broken.

Broken.

I am broken.

There is really no other way to describe my current state of affairs.

The only thing that keeps me sane is that made a conscious decision to see this as temporary. 

I am making a pledge to reinvent myself. 

This shift from survival mode to one of reinvention has given me purpose.

Otherwise, I would just be broken. If you read on, you might see why. And you just might encourage me to write a country album. Yeah, it's that bad.

I have a broken ankle

My ankle. See that tiny part chipped off at the bottom on the right side? 

Three weeks ago I was walking into my hostel in Cusco, Peru after visiting the gorgeous cathedral on the Plaza de Armas. The doorway has just one step down and even though I saw it, I still managed to roll my left ankle. I heard a snapping sound. I knew in my gut it was broken but it was only when the staff really started urging me to go to the 'gringo' clinic that I owned up, let them call me an ambulance, and got X-Rays.

Suddenly, just two days after completing the most incredible five-day trek to Machu Picchu, I was getting a cast wrapped around my left ankle in South America. 

I have a broken heart after my break up 

Broken Heart by TimOve on Flickr

The very next day, my relationship of over 7 years fell apart. Of course it didn't go from perfection to us breaking up. But the series of events that unfolded around my broken ankle highlighted, for me, the patterns and problems we had been having over the last months and, I suppose, since the beginning of our time together. 

There was the moment in our last argument when our entire relationship unraveled for me. One sentence out of her mouth that made me snap. So even though I would be stuck in Cusco, by myself, for who knew how long, I told her that was it. She had to leave. She was taking energy from me without giving it, exactly when I needed it. 

She left (after bringing me enough food to last a week) and I sat in my dank, cold basement hotel room completely alone for six days before getting on a plane to come 'home'. 

I am broke as a joke 

When we were sitting in that emergency room in Cusco, I cried my eyes out for awhile.  Not because I broke the ankle and not even because our plans would have to change. I was just so sick and tired of scraping by. I have these huge visions of what my life is supposed to be like, and having this broken ankle highlighted exactly what was wrong with it. For most, traveling the world non-stop for four years seems like the ultimate dream. I know how special it was, and I don't take a day of it for granted. But over the last year, despite working for 12 hours a day or more on our website and our business, we were progressively bringing in less and less money. 

I felt that we were never going to hit big enough to make the kind of money I really wanted. I don't ask for much, but laying there thinking about where I could go, it all seemed so hopeless because just paying for a last minute plane ticket back to Chicago or to Germany and paying to get the cast removed in six weeks - that was enough to almost put me in the negative. 

Thanks to Phoney Nickle on Flickr

I broke down and cried. We broke up. And then I had to buy that emergency plane ticket back to Chicago anyway. And now I am here for who knows how long, which means I'm having to own up to dealing with my taxes, getting Obamacare, and how long can I really stay with friends before I have to start paying rent?  My net worth is rapidly nearing three digits and this is not where I thought I would be at 34.

I have a broken business 

The worst part is that our business was based entirely on our story, and now there will be no more pages written in that story. So what to do about the business we have. She doesn't want to give it up, on the one hand, but has no interest in it on the other. I sunk huge dreams and aspirations into it and now I have no energy to keep it going. We haven't even announced the break-up on our website yet or in our newsletter. But I put all my eggs into that basket and now I don't know what to do.  As hard as the emotional side of our romantic break up is, the loss of all my dreams surrounding what our business could become is also a huge loss. 

With no other source of income at the moment, I have a broken leg, a broken heart, a broken business and  am totally broke. 

From Swiss Bones on Flickr

Let the healing begin

Somehow I have decided that I won't let this keep me down. Somewhere in my heart I know that I am meant for something - something that only my unique life and experience can share with the world. Now let the healing begin. 

Coffee Quotes: February 12, 2014 Figureoutableness

Nabbed from NotSalmon.com

"Everything is Figureoutable."
Marie Forleo

If you are online and interested even remotely in online business, you'll know that every one and their mom is pushing their affiliate sales to Marie Forleo's B School. As is my nature, I am skeptical of anything that is totally hyped and also out of my price range. 

But damn if I don't love her YouTube channel, MarieTV and all her helpful and encouraging emails and videos on MarieForleo.com.

Yesterday I was watching one of her special three-part pre-B-School training videos and she said something so simple - a piece of advice from her mother. 

Everything is figureoutable. 

It's easy, especially right now, to feel like I need to run into the next open plan office, slide into a cheap gray office chair and slide my wheels under the desk and cling to a computer forever. I'm scared as hell and so close to getting an office job and all the security that comes with it. Feeling like a failure is getting harder and harder for me to shake. 

I've never had NO money and no job and no prospects before.  But then I tell myself that this big life I have lived, no matter how broke it has left me, has to count for something more. 

This quote sets my intention for today. I know that I need to clarify my vision. As soon as I do - the actual path, all the rest, can be figured out. 

If you are reading this feeling like you are stuck, if your paralysis is rooted in fear, let this quote lift you up just enough today to see over the top of that mountain to the valley below. No matter what you want to do, everything is figureoutable. 

Coffee Quotes February 11, 2014: Fight Club Wisdom

Original painting by Anne LaClair, taken from Facebook. 

"It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything."

Brad Pitt in Fight Club.

Between all the baby photos, cat videos and motivational quotes on Facebook this morning, this painting by Anne LaClair is what spoke to me the most. 

I'm doing my best not to wallow, not to feel sorry for myself. After all, I made all the decisions that put me here - except for the broken ankle. That one was an accident. 

But now that it has all fallen apart, this quote is exactly what I needed to hold on to today. 

Having lost everything that made up my everyday life, both personally and financially, I am very attracted to the idea, whether it's true or not, that now is the time that I am finally free to do anything. 

This is the stomach-churning scene with Brad Pitt and Edward Norton. 

Coffee Quotes: February 6, 2014 The Illusion of Ownership

"Attachment to things drops away by itself when you no longer seek to find yourself in them."

Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose.

This is probably the first time in my life where I truly have nothing.

My accounts are all hovering above zero. Taxes must be paid. I have to get my cast off and physical therapy. I paid a last minute flight home from South America. Plus, I need things - groceries, a winter jacket, things add up.

Staying with friends and family is a true gift, but I have been letting something really get to me.

They are all so damn successful. It's tax season here so that has been part of why I am so aware of their incomes - some of them pay more in annual taxes than I have ever made in my life.

So, while going through the pain of a break up and a broken leg, I've also started developing a bit of an inferiority complex. Given that we have the same background, same schools, practically the same large, midwestern state universities how have I ended up with nothing at 34?

When I express this, I get immediately shot down - probably with good reason. They say things like you have traveled the world, lived most of our dreams. One friend said that while she made excellent money, she has sacrificed 11 years of her adult life to be in this position today. Each time someone says something like that to me I agree on the one hand but have been feeling this burning sense of inferiority on the other.

Today's chapter in A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose called The Illusion of Ownership couldn't have come at a more perfect time. Especially because I signed up to Mint yesterday and those easy to read graphs with glaring red colors created an even clearer picture of my financial struggles.

In this section of the book, Tolle postulates that material possessions are so important to us because we identify them as a reflection of self, the egoic self and that even the active rejection of material possessions can still mean the person is limited by their ego as, as he states, 'making yourself right and others wrong is one of the principal egoic mind patterns.' For example someone who gives everything up, lives in a cabin in the woods and, feeling surperior, judges others for not doing the same is still rooted in their own ego.

In other words, rejecting all material possessions is the same as non-stop consumption if both are an attempt to create a sense of self or self-identity through them.

The only way to transcend this, according to Tolle, is to first be aware of your identification with the thing. Awareness of this feeling is the first step to step outside or beyond the ego into a state of consciousness.

I was started to create this idea in my mind that I was less than the people in my life for my distinct lack of possessions. My goal now is not to attach my identity to my financial situation. I am who I am regardless of money or possessions. I do not wholly believe this, not yet. But just being aware of it will help to get me there.

In order to reinvent myself I must have a connection to my true self. My attachment to things, or lack their of, needs to stop. This lesson, therefore, is key to my reinvention.

I am really enjoying this book! It's changing the way I think about connecting to my true self. 

Get it on Amazon! A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose (Oprah's Book Club)

Coffee Quotes: February 5, 2014

In the past, whenever times got tough, I would watch a YouTube clip or something quick on Netflix (or, way back in the day Comedy Central on the actual television set) under the pretense that I needed something funny to take the pain away.

Nothing more than an avoidance tactic, it did not heal the pain but shift it to a deeper place inside, to be continued...

That is not the way I want to handle the rest of my life. To be honest, for the first two weeks of this breakup, I watched Scandal, Parks and Rec, Aziz Anzari standup and a whole lot of 30 Rock. But when it comes to reinvention and living my life on purpose, I need something more constructive, less ‘laugh out loud’ funny and more soothing for my soul. 

Instead of starting my day with anger, sadness and arguments from the break-up and work emails that need to be handled ‘immediately’, I’ve decided to take 30 minutes each morning to spend time with my favorite drink - coffee - and read books that guide me in my reinvention.

To keep myself from sinking back into the abyss of morning YouTube clips, I though I’d share one quote here every morning that charges me up for the day. (In a booming, Gandalf or Dumbledore voice) I shall call these posts Coffee Quotes. Today’s coffee quote is taken from A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose by Eckhart Tolle.

“When you don’t cover up the world with words and labels, a sense of the miraculous returns to your life.”

I read this this morning and it couldn’t come at a better time. This seems like the key to reinvention. You have to let go of all those labels that represent who you are, or were, in order to focus on becoming exactly who you want to be.

I am really enjoying this book! It's changing the way I think about connecting to my true self. 

A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose (Oprah's Book Club)

Reinvention, Guaranteed.

There are two ways to deal with this break-up, this breakdown, this momentous shift in my life.

Right now, everything is numb, bleak and gray. 

I can crumble in the face of the challenge or I can face this head on, based on the idea that the only way out of this is through.

In the past, I have always let hardships knock me down and have waited for someone, anyone, to pick me back up.

Getting through this in a healthy way is the key to the rest of my life. I know it from the depths of my soul. I can sense somewhere in my gut that this is the defining moment of my adult life.

And at exactly this time in my life I am no longer afraid of this challenge, instead I welcome it.

I could do without the pain, the sense of loss, knowing that she is hurting, too. I could live my entire life without ever feeling this shadow follow me around every day making me wonder if there was just something I could have done differently to make this all work.

What's done is done, however, and if I do not reinvent myself to purposefully create the rest of my life, then I will continue in the patterns that lead me to being entirely broken, which is what I am now.

It might be a lofty goal to call this post 'Reinvention, Guaranteed' but I have never been so determined in my life.

Fire in the belly.

Jessie Valentine is the space for reinvention, for me to share this process with the world, to live out loud This is a way to be held accountable to my goal of having my inner thoughts mirror my outer actions, instead of living one way and secretly wishing it could be another.

Is there a slight hope that someone out there is listening? Sure...

Is there also a hope that someone might have gone through this and will share their own experience with me? Of course...

Is there an even bigger hope that by me putting it all out there that someone else might have the guts to make the first move? Absolutely!

If there is one lesson I have learned in this online world, it's that no matter how isolated I feel, the truth is, there are supportive wonderful people out there. No one ever has to feel alone. Online friends can help you through as much as others can face to face.

And that's a feeling that I really need right about now as I reinvent myself and step gracefully into being Jessie Valentine.