Synchronicity

Joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart

Synchronicity: The experience of two or more events that are not causally related that occur together in a meaningful manner, unlikely to be by chance. Synchronicity is also described as Divine Providence or as a serendipitous event which is the act of finding something unexpected and useful while searching for something else entirely.

I am focusing on the definition of synchronicity because of an event that have happened to me recently. I'll describe it to you in a minute, but the big question for me is not what it was but why it occurred to and for me, particularly at this late stage of my life, when it seems I've been waiting for it forever? Can we create synchronicity as the Law of Attraction states? Are there a select few that can change the future or present simply due to their ideas? I hate to think of these events as benefiting only a select few. I don't like the idea of a chosen group. At any rate this last summer was the summer of life's generosity toward me and I am thankful.

It started with my job situation. During the pre-legislative session, the legislative session and the post-session I literally did not know if I had a job. The governor pledged to cut higher education, various legislators vowed to be either for or against the governor's plan, the university chancellor and the system president all sounded off, and our university had various scenarios for cutting our program either 5, 10, 15 or 20% (or other scenarios that would be either in line with the university's cut or that would exceed the cut by 2 X or more, in some cases the estimates went to a full 50% cut of our program budget). Then add to this the impact this had on the personnel in our group and the various interaction effects between various people that did or didn't get along, with those folks being impacted by the budget woes, and you had a big mess on the employment front. Yikes and yuck. Big headache.

My response was either fight or flight. Most of the time I chose to ignore the clamor outside my door. But, sometimes, I couldn't help but be affected, particularly when our director and our associate vice chancellor of finance appeared to be at wits end. Add to that, that the powers that be said that they did not know if I would have a job if we didn’t’ receive funding from the legislature) and my nerves were shot. A million plus in cuts, and I was planning a vacation out west to take my mom on the "old home tour," still not knowing if I would be employed when I got back.

Fall sunflower field at Burden Plantation, Baton Rouge, LA

In the meantime, in my despair... I was noodling around on the Internet, probably trying to find a recipe for dinner and I found a job announcement on Job.com for a gerontological researcher. I applied, apparently, and then promptly forgot about it. Within days, I got a call from the administrative assistant of the Senior VP of Clinical Operations at Amedisys, a large (now 16,000 employees in 47 states) home health and hospice company headquartered in Baton Rouge, and they wanted to interview me. After I solicited the help of said administrative assistant to send me the job description, I interviewed, breaking every rule in the book: What that means is.. I told them about my life (my mother), that I truly wasn’t looking for a job, forgot that I contacted them, and wasn’t interested in leaving academia. Ugh. Anyone of those faux pas could have been a huge mistake, but instead, my future potential boss "got" me more than most and said, "some things are meant to be," which prompted one of my life-guides to say, "pay attention," which I did (I don't have to be told twice when lightning is about to strike).

My mother, my constant cheerleader

Those words echoed throughout my head as I flew out west with money that I did not have on faith that I did, that things would turn out right. I think it was in Oregon that I heard I still had a job at LSU through a mass email to our constituents, which was a relief, but which was delivered in a sort of weird way. Anyway, it freed-up my mind enough to have a spectacular time taking Grammy to visit her 95 year old sister, Portland where I was raised, and the village where she grew-up, respectively. We ate sumptuous salmon at the Olsons (cousins) in Vancouver, met up with Myron (my brother) and family at Canon Beach, spent time with Bob and Thea Pyle, and Bobby Larson in Gray’s River eating prime rib and chasing butterflies, and thoroughly enjoyed our Inn on the Willamette River near Cottonwood Cove. I ate lots of razor clams and Marion berries, which made me a very happy woman, despite the pain in my neck, which thankfully, is finally dissipating somewhat, but which stopped my blogging/writing for months, and very nearly put a dent in my new photography hobby.

Anyway, I got back to Baton Rouge and interviewed again at Amedisys, and as luck would have it, they hired me. I started in September as the Director of Chronic Care Research, and work on their clinical R&D programming efforts. I’m very proud of this company, their focus on business ethics, passion for serving their clients, and their creativity.

For 15 years I’ve been lamenting that I was an academic (a converted attorney) that landed in Louisiana and never left because I followed my husband to the job that God intended for him. Now that I am no longer an underemployed academic, and maybe in the job that God intended for me, I'm trying to figure out what that means for my life’s story. It takes awhile to sing a new tune, but I'm trying because as long as things are in sync I want to enjoy the hell out of them.

So, that's the story of one synchronicity that happened to me. There are others that occurred right around that time that I'll get to later, maybe, if my neck holds out enough so that I can continue writing at night (or in addition to when I'm at work). The neck is better, however, it's taken a bit of time to get a handle on it, which tells me I have more to learn. If I talked to my life-guide often enough, about this or anything else she would tell me that Carolyn Myss would say that the pain in my neck isn't just physical, it's metaphorical, and I would try not to yell or sing, "la, la, la, la, I'm not listening" cause I surely would have learned my lesson by then, wouldn't you think?