Doing the Thing
/I recently updated and streamlined my website and for the first time described myself by saying: “Since 2018, I have practiced as an independent consultant.” The word “practice” is one I’ve been thinking a lot about and maybe fallen a little in love with. Whether it’s been influenced by my journey of trying to maintain a personal yoga practice for my own health and wellbeing or taking a shine to the way healing professionals have a practice, there is something about embracing a practice that speaks to commitment, and at the same time frees you from defining yourself as your profession (or pursuit).
Consider the difference:
I am a consultant. vs. I practice as a consultant.
I am a witch. vs. I practice witchcraft.
I am a writer. vs. I have a writing practice.
There’s a lovely saying reminding us that, “We are human beings, not human doings,” and I can vibe to that. It’s important not to get caught up in defining our value by our activity or busyness. At the same time, I think it’s important not to get bogged down in defining ourselves by our roles, titles, or what we say we are. An antidote to this may be to embrace practice as an ongoing activity; a process of doing whereby we explore, experiment, learn, and (hopefully) continually improve; a thing we do, and have agency in through the doing.
We aren’t the work, but we are the weavers.
Practice takes commitment. It is as ongoing as it is imperfect. It is almost ritual in its regularity and the level of self-awareness it both requires and instills. It is the magic of the “-ing” form of verbs that puts us always in the progressive present: consult-ing, spellcast-ing, writ-ing, garden-ing. (I might even suggest, tongue firmly in cheek, yoga-ing, friend-ing, activism-ing, etc.)
Whatever we are doing right now is what we are practicing. And we’re bound to get good at it, so let it be a worthy thing.