Bookkeeping Butterfly

I've always been torn between two sides of myself: On the one hand, I'm an analytical number cruncher. I have a talent for looking at a jumbled mass of transactions and sensing the formulae and patterns that give them meaning and hold them together.It is what makes me such a natural bookkeeper, and also why I'm so adept at grasping advanced musical theory. That side of me is very accountant-like and orderly. It is the side of me that practices for concerts and pays our rent.


On the other hand, there has always been an intensely creative side of me just aching to be let out of the jar. She feels her time has come and she wants to be the one running the show now. I've always tried to keep her in check because that side of me doesn't have a talent for paying the bills, so much, but lately I haven't been able to quell her cries for attention. She's not asking anymore, she's demanding. She wants to know what in the world we're doing sitting at a desk all day working at assigned tasks when there's a whole world out there to explore and people to meet and ideas to flesh out and scenery to soak in and walks to take. She wants to flit about from flower to flower, soaking up the nectar of each experience life has to offer. She has talents that have never been developed and she wants to see what she is capable of creating if left to her own devices.

OK, so now what? I mean, I'm all for that. I like her. She's fun and intense and enthusiastic and interested in everything. But someone has to pay the rent and make sure that we eat.

So in the midst of feeling this conflict growing within me, eagerly wanting to follow the thoughts and feelings that make me the happiest, wondering how to reconcile that with that whole pesky bill-paying thing, I met a psychic. I felt connected to her instantly, and so made an appointment.

My question would be: How do I find my highest good by following the best-feeling thoughts and impulses? Do I stay at my job or do I look for something more creative?

Not surprisingly, when I woke up the morning of my session and checked Facebook while coffee was brewing, I came across a post by Andrea deMichaelis of Horizons Magazine.  Her question made me agitated, and I came off much more negative than is my custom:

Survey: Why do you do the work you do? How did you get interested in it?

My answer:  I learned to type In high school, and so was qualified to be a secretary. When I moved to FL I registered with a temp agency who placed me in an accounting Dept of an aerospace firm. Bookkeeping and payroll are marketable skills, so I learned them. I've spent the rest of my adult life trying (unsuccessfully) to break out of that field, to do something that better suits my temperament. I got an MA in an unrelated field, but was unable to find employment in that field, so I always end up in accounting firms. Had I just bended to fate and studied accounting instead, I would be making real money now. But instead I have a job that just pays my bills if I don't spend any money, doing work that feels like work, dreaming of the day I turn into a butterfly.

Not long after that little rant I sat down with the psychic.  Her first words to me were, "I see numbers all around you."  She looked puzzled. " I see you working with numbers, and that surprises me because it doesn't fit your energy at all."


Okay.  She had my attention.  She went on to tell me it was as if there were two completely different personalities in me.  One is very analytical and disciplined.  She is the good girl who has been trained to stay in the box.  The other one she called the "wild child hippie girl" trying to get out.  The analytical box-dweller follows rules and earns a living and thrives on the numbers thing; the wild child not so much.  In fact, she said, the two are so different that they have different eneagram scores.  The bookeeper is a 1; the wild child a 4.  I'll have to learn what that means.


She told me that I was surrounded by child energy, and she heard lots of giggles.  She said there is a young child spirit hanging about me in the non-physical realm, and that there is also a young boy (aged 4-6) in my life whose energy is connected with mine.  It is this child energy that wants to be expressed.  "I see children all around you, and lots of giggles."


She was uncannily right-on about certain private matters that I won't go into here, which caused me to take her seriously when she told me this next bit.  


We got to the part of the reading where she talked about my work.  She told me to stay at my job, because "it won't get any worse than it is now" (ok, that's sort of comforting), and I will keep making just enough money to pay the bills. She told me the money will flow, but not pile up.  But what will really open things up for me is not what happens at my job so much as what I will be doing creatively in my spare time. 


Just then her spirit guides gave her a message that made her laugh, and she said to them, "OK, I'll tell her but she's gonna laugh."  She could see me surrounded by small children who all have musical instruments that they take out of a big basket in the middle of the room.  I'm sitting on a small munchkin chair, and although there's an aide off to the side, the children's attention is focused on me.  I am encouraging them to express themselves in a completely uninhibited fashion, not worried about whether or not they are getting it right.  She said that for some of those kids I am the only safe place in their life where they feel safe enough to totally express unbridled joy and creativity.  


OK, if you know me, you know that's just crazy.  I don't do kids.  Yet, while she was telling me this story, I could totally see it.  More importantly, I could feel it, and hear the giggles.  But how could such a thing be possible?  Vacation Bible School?  I don't do church.  Captain Music?  Possibly.  It just didn't make sense.  Until just now.  As I've been typing this, I can see the scene in much more detail and realize that I'm a clown.  That explains the giggles, and why I'm with kids in the first place.  


That is so cool.  Who would have thought being a clown would be the answer to my life's quest for meaning?  The funny thing is, early in the reading, almost an hour earlier, she asked me if I knew anyone named Carl.  She said that he would be instrumental in the chain of events that would lead to the next phase of my career.  I told her no, knowing full well that I know people who know a Carl.  "He's married to a clown," is how the thought came to me.


As she painted this giggly picture for me, she told me that doing this would bring me the fulfillment I've been longing to feel, but that I would need to keep my day job because it wouldn't bring in money.  She told me that when I am at work and I feel restless and bored and unfulfilled, it is because I have sent the wrong "me" to work.  Send the analytical box-dweller to work, because someone has to pay the bills, and train the wild-child to wait until her turn comes.  Both are me, and both must be given a full opportunity to thrive.  If I quit the numbers racket the analytical side of me would suffer and wither.  Let her go to work, but don't let her work overtime.  That's wild child time.


As I was leaving, she said to me, "I see a hanging butterfly.  Is it a necklace?"  I told her it was a wind chime that hung outside my window.  Her spirit guides were telling her that the butterfly was significant to me and she asked if I knew what that meant.  Dude.  I AM the butterfly.  Maybe I'm a clown butterfly?  How would that look?  I'll have to ask Dudlee the Clown for some ideas on a costume.  He's a genius, you know.   


So, whatever shall I call myself?