Heart Fire & Soul Passion: Great Round of Mandala stage 6

Much bigger piece of artwork than I've tackled since well before I left school - and that's appropriate because it's about a big dilemma!. Trying to find the balance between my corporate side and my energetic side, my highly regarded well-paid and exceedingly stressful job and my softer, more flowing side where money isn't important and quality of life comes first.

It's a struggle. The first part, the idea for the background, came easily though my normal workbook didn't feel big enough when I tried to put the cut out words and images onto it. So I sketched a rough outline on wallpaper lining paper and left it alone for a couple of days. I started painting it this morning and had a blissful time, filling in the moon, then the night sky, then the sun and day sky. And then I got stuck.
I found the envelope which had all my magazine and newspaper clippings in it and started trying to put them onto the background. And none of them felt right. So I went on the internet, found more images and quotes, battled my printer to get them on paper and went to add them. And they didn't feel right either. Resizing, trimming, overlapping, spacing - nothing made them look right. So I took a break.
I posted the picture of my work in progress on the Mandala Magic site along with the Choosing your name mandala I made yesterday, and waited to see if anything came to me to determine what was wrong.

Stage 6: Dilemma mandala

And staring at the image on the screen, which looks somehow different to the 50cm x 50cm version on my kitchen floor, it suddenly struck me that the balance is already there. The sun and moon are both part of the cycle of day and night. There are times when the moon is in the day sky and times when the sun is out during traditional night hours. They are opposites and contrasts but they are not mutually exclusive. When one is in the sky, that doesn't mean the other can't be there. It is not having both that is wrong, it is trying to make one into the other. Moonlight doesn't give the depth and richness of colour that sunlight brings, sunlight is too harsh for bats and owls and other night creatures. So there's no use hunting for bats at midday, and there's little point in looking to take a stunning picture of an open rose at midnight. Each has their time and place.

So my dilemma is possibly not so much about ditching the corporate world entirely, though that works for some people. It is about ditching THIS job, this particular nightmare, and not being sucked in by the flattery that entices me to stay where my heart bleeds every day for the pointlessness and the bullying, for the lack of control and direction, the waste of my efforts. It doesn't diminish the fact that I am very good at what I do, that I deserve recognition, it simply states that this does not make my soul sing, it causes me to resist walking out of the door every morning and this is not living, it is surviving. And the treasures that the money buys are not enough to make up for it.

And that decision has already been made, and declared. The challenge will be in sticking to the decision and not to permit my reasoning mind to let me sidle sideways into another role that will bring the same pain and despair, whilst bringing in the income.