Personal Atlas: A baptism of fire!

My story and map this week is about my baptism of fire into taxi driving! Plus why these simple maps could be beneficial to you and some guidelines for making one.

Hello!

Thank you for joining me here for another dive into personal maps and story telling. I can only say that life has felt absolutely chaotic this week. Read on to find out why. As always, this letter is divided into two parts:

1. The personal map and story (free for everyone to read)

2. Map your own journey (available to all subscribers this week)

Is it normal to still get anxious about starting a new job when you’re almost 60?

That’s the question I asked myself this week then I started driving a taxi. My story (which are extracts from my journal) and map this week is about my baptism of fire into this new experience!

Baptism of Fire © Deb.Aura.Art 2023

Sunday evening - the anxiety sets in - I’m starting a new taxing driving gig tomorrow, after a long period of getting a taxi licence from the council. There are just so many unknowns: a fully electric, automatic car, a taxi drivers app, charging an electric car, working with Special Needs children and the general public, torrential rain and flooding and more! I’m keen to get Monday over with so I can tick off a job, and feel like I’ve achieved something.

Monday - I turn up for my first job and the client is a no show. So not a completed job, no tick. Fortunately the scheduled afternoon school picks ups go without any hitch, although I did have to learn how to collapse a walking frame and fit it into the boot of the car.

Tuesday - I’m lulled into a false sense of security as all goes well.

Wednesday - the proverbial hits the fan! The rain is still pouring down in buckets, the wind is howling. Ferries are cancelled, pick up points are changed, waiting time needs to be charged, the driving app freezes multiples times during the day at crucial points (i.e. when I need to complete the job and bill the client), electric charging points and payments don’t work as they should. Wow! Almost everything that could go wrong, does.

Thursday - today’s challenge was realising 10 minutes before pick up that the client was paying cash and I had no float. So I made a quick detour to a shop with an ATM, withdrew cash, and bought something arbitrary to create myself a float.

Friday - I have a job allocated to me that clashes with a social event that was booked months ago. I need the money, so I have to decide exactly how to fit it in.

An enormous learning curve

As the week drew to a close, I felt so unsettled, my week had had no structure and the things I needed to rely on (like the taxi app), were well, unreliable! What an enormous learning curve - I was not expecting it to be so massive. No wonder I was anxious! I’ve been poking around in the dark fog of disequilibrium¹ all week (something I may write about more in the future).

I ask myself: Have I done the right thing?
Have you ever had an experience like this? I’d love to hear about it.

This week, I am leaving this post open to all subscribers. Read on to find out why these simple maps could be beneficial to you and see some guidelines to making one.

So what’s the point of “mapping” this experience?

There are two reasons really:

1. It helped me to work through the angst I felt after my first week and put it into perspective

2. Now that its documented in a map, I won’t forget the experience!

The more I make these simple maps of things that happen in my everyday life, the more I realise how beneficial they are to my mental and general wellbeing

When Saturday dawned I sat down to make this map. It wasn’t fancy, but as I wrote out each days events, I began to create space to breathe and process the thoughts and anxiety. What felt chaotic in the moment, was being put into perspective. By the time I’d finished it, I felt that I had accepted all that had happened, and realised that it was actually just an enormous learning curve. It also reminded me and reinforces what I already know, that “this too shall pass”.

Plus, I had documented the small occurrences that made up the whole chaotic experience so I would never forget the details of them, or how the sequence built up to a crescendo on Wednesday.

Share the love! If there is something in this letter that you loved/liked please share it with someone.

How could this help you?

Here’s an annotated version of the map to show how I laid it out.

I started with noting the days of the week. I chose a non linear layout as this added to the confusion and lack of clarity I felt. Then I added the small details of things that happened each day. Then I wrote out my phrase “poking around in the dark fog of disequilibrium”. The last thing I added was the dark “fog” around the edges (which you can see in the final version above).

Annotated Baptism of Fire map

Your turn

• Think about a recent event / experience (or more distant one if you have a good memory of it) that felt chaotic or made you anxious.

• List all the things that made you feel that way.

• Then, if you want, you could try to doodle, draw, paint (whichever is good) how you felt (similar to the non linear layout and dark fog surrounding my events).

• Add the details (using words or doodles) to the drawing in a timeline or in another way that makes sense to you or represent how things felt at the time. A map doesn’t always need to be chronological or logical.

• Share your piece with me, or keep it private.

• How do you feel about the experience now?

If you’d like to know more about making a map like this or mapping your life more broadly, do get in touch² and we can talk. That’s it for now, dear Mappery Moodlers! I’ll be welcoming you back into this space in two weeks time.

New website, and other maps and stories in this Personal Atlas series

Head to the Index Page for all the maps and stories so far. All stories are free to read, whilst paid subscribers have the opportunity to find out how to use maps to document their own life journeys. You can also visit my new Mappery Moodles website to find out more about what I do with maps!

Fancy earning a paid subscription? By sharing this letter and by referring friends you’ll receive special benefits such as complementary paid subscriptions.

1. The “dark fog of disequilibrium” is my own phrase, which I use to describe the dark place we have to go through when we are learning something new. The word disequilibrium was used by Jean Piaget to describe a state of cognitive imbalance.

2. You can email me on debs.stott@mapperymoodles.me