Are You In Your Power Alley?

Recently, a friend told a mutual friend of ours that I was in my power alley. I was super excited, totally confused and then, my reluctant default, dubious. I wasn’t aware I had a power alley to be in, much less that I was in it. This made me nervous.

I saw souped up yellow Ferraris speeding down the Autobahn but… I wasn’t so sure I was in one. It felt kind of like I was watching and possibly going to get hit. What was I doing?

Surely, there is something you are supposed to do there. And shouldn’t you feel, I don’t know, powerful? I don’t. I feel like I am groping in the dark unsure if there is even a light switch most of the time.

So, I looked for clues on what exactly a power alley is.

In baseball power alleys are the sections between left and center and right and center field. They correspond to the area where power hitters will usually send balls that they hit with the most power. This made me more nervous. Power hitter? I haven’t even warmed up to the idea I might be a power player.

In landscape design, (a much more comforting and familiar genre) a power alley is a lane in a garden or park, bordered by trees or shrubs. What happens there? It doesn’t say. Chipmunks racing? Squirrels nut-hunting? Couples walking? Their well-manicured dogs squatting?… don’t know.

And then I tackled the prepositional phrase: in your power alley.

Much more predictable and yet still strangely abstract. It means suited to your tastes and abilities: a job that fits you so well, success is inevitable. Three main criteria apply: Aptitude, Interests and Personality.

In this case should I get off my lose the five pounds I have somehow gained before Christmas and commit wholeheartedly to my most passionate taste and ability: eating pounds of dark chocolate covered almonds? Or taking extremely hot baths with Fresh Sugar cubes?

Surely, struggling over how to most articulately articulate my deepest thoughts on a blog not yet reaching the masses, and a book that has not quite ‘gone viral’ while leading the creative vision for an ad agency that really just needs ten more hours every day – this cannot be the postcard shot of me in my power alley.

So, I did what any self-respecting power alley-er would do.

I called my intuitive. She agreed with him. What? I said half laughing, half kind of pissed off that this seeming limbo-land was it.

As usual, she offered brilliance. And a killer analogy, which I just love. She said, “Think of it like this. If I offered you a chocolate chip cookie and handed you two and a half cups of flour, a cup of brown sugar, a couple eggs and the rest of the ingredients, and said, enjoy, you would not have anything to eat BUT you would know you had all the ingredients to make exponentially more cookies than one. And you’d know exactly what to do. Stir, stir, stir. And get that oven preheating.”

So right now, you are reading the prep work of a power alley diva. Exciting, no? Is your power alley pre-heating? Or, perhaps you are in that Modina!