When we think about reconnecting it is most often associated with people from our past. Maybe we reconnect on social media or at a reunion or maybe even by happenstance. Reconnecting is defined as “re-establishing a bond of communication or emotion”. I recently has an interesting reconnection and I don’t even think I was aware of it until much later.

Last year, as most of you, I found myself suddenly at home for a few months when the pandemic hit. I, literally, had no work to do because my business was shut down. I had no idea what to do with all that free time. I later realized that I’d been pushing so hard for so long that I’d forgotten what it felt like to not be pushing at all. It was an odd struggle, to be sure, but one that I am now grateful for.

I used to spend quite a bit of time writing and working in the film and video industries but, as life would have it, I had pivoted away from that and had started a business that was taking up most of my time. That and being a husband and a father were all I thought I had room for in my life. But when the pandemic hit and I had so much more free time, I started to write again. I can’t tell you how amazing it felt. I can’t tell you how much I’d missed it. During the pandemic, I was able to reconnect with… myself.

Who knew we could reconnect with ourselves? Today is roughly a year after I started to write again and I just spent the last few weeks directing a feature film – my first one in over 10 years. As I sit here thinking about it, I now realize that I would not have directed this film if the pandemic had not allowed me to pause my life and reconnect with my passion. Despite all the pain and suffering the pandemic caused around our world, I think it also helped many of us take a moment and reevaluate who we are and where we were in our lives.

“At the center of your being you have the answer; you know who you are and you know what you want.”

~ Lao Tzu

I think I’ve been on this journey for some time. Even the business I started, a float center, is designed to help us slow down and reconnect with ourselves. It’s about getting a space to shut everything else out and to be alone with yourself. Something that is near impossible to do when we have the world at our fingertips in our smart phones. It reminds me of one of the first blog posts I wrote on this site when I was trekking back from basecamp of Mt. Everest. I was alone with my thoughts for hours and hours and really had a chance to dig into myself and figure out what it is that I wanted in my life. That’s what reconnecting did for me.

The first step was to disconnect to all that I was already connected to. If we are not able to do that, we cannot reconnect with ourselves. We are too busy, too overwhelmed and too frustrated to be able to look into ourselves. Life has a way of taking over and just pulling you along and if you’re not careful, you’re going to find yourself in some places that you don’t want to be. Don’t be that person who is unhappy with their life when all you have to do is decide what it is you want to do. Once you do that all that is left is to walk toward whatever it is that you want. It’s not complicated.

So, if you’re reading this and you find yourself in a place you don’t want to be, just disconnect from whatever is around you for a while and reconnect with yourself. That’s where you’ll find the answers to the questions you have.