I get chills every time I watch this. The world really is an amazing place. Even when it feels like a parade of headaches and bills and traffic jams, things like this exist. Damn, Mother Nature. You know your stuff.
Murmuration from Sophie Windsor Clive on Vimeo.
I did all the right things in high school. Did most of the right things in college. Then I just...got lost. For about a decade. Fine, twelve years. Yes, entire humans have been born and grown and developed personalities and philosophies and complex orthodontia in the time that I was lost. Lost. I was lost. That's hard to admit.
I knew I wanted to write. I did write, but in a haphazard, aimlessly ricocheting, how-can-I-pay-the-bills-this-month sort of way. I didn't feel confident enough to write what I wanted to write, the things I admired and loved to read. Confidence - or the ability to churn out final products without confidence - is essential. I had neither.
From the outside, it looks like not a lot has happened to me. No marriages, no children, few relationships, few accomplishments of the Duly Impressive Sort.
My journey has been very internal. The day you learn that you can be blisteringly unhappy on the back of a boat in the Caribbean after eating shrimp and drinking white wine is the day you stop striving. There's something grimly comforting in realizing that you can be deeply unsatisfied when you have everything you ever wanted and deeply content even if you're single, unemployed, and over 30.
I mean, what? That just doesn't make any sense.
But it taught me that the inside of my brain informs my entire world - so it doesn't matter what that external world looks like or what I do. What matters is what I think about what I do. Because you take the inside of your brain everywhere you go. It wouldn't matter if I was writing a novel in my apartment in Paris or sitting in Poughkeepsie watching Real Housewives if the evil pixies in my brain are making trouble. Telling me I'm not good enough or not smart enough or not successful enough or just not enough.
Not enough? No. No, you sweet, misguided pixies. We are all enough. I am, you are, your weird cousin is. But everyone has to find that sweet spot for themselves. In their own way, whether it's doing all the things or doing none of the things. And then we have to find it again. And again. And again, until we realize that it's never found, it's a simply a process of finding and forgetting and finding again.
All I really want from my life is to be at peace with myself. Maybe to be a place of peace for others.
Peace, the blessed silence that comes when you're not concerned about what you're doing or what anyone else is doing or what place those actions have on the bell curve of right and wrong, impressive or not-so-very. It's when right and wrong don't exist any more because you're always acting from a place of love.
Acting from a place of love requires a centered mind and heart, vigilance and patience. It's something I've managed, if I'm being generous, maybe .003 percent of the time. But finding peace will matter more to my life and to those who know me than if I ever write anything else again, much less something brilliant or successful or - with enough questionable goat sacrifices - both.
Maybe I wasn't lost over that decade so much as I was freewheeling through my brain and my psyche and, dare I say it, my soul to find that confidence. That center of me from whence all the good stuff springs.
Coach Taylor (and Eleanor Roosevelt) says, "Success is not a goal, it's a by-product." I want my writing to be the by-product, not the goal.
Because that peaceful place produces good work. Because being at peace with the inside of my head means I'm wholly focused on laying down whatever words I have in that moment. Sometimes the good is pretty darn good, sometimes it's average, sometimes it's an unholy mess. But writing from a place of peace and love is how I can do the work I feel I'm meant to do.
And we all have work we're meant to do.
I will always be writing, whether I'm working as a secretary somewhere or getting advance copies of my book delivered to a bungalow in Costa Rica. Because I'm a writer. That's what I do.
But it was never about writing. Writing is the messenger, not the message. The message is what I found for myself while lost for a decade. The message is that the more peace I can hold for myself and for others, the better I can write. And the better I can make my small corner of the world. The message is going to be honed as I spend my next decades being found, being lost again, finding, losing, and finally realizing that it's all the same.
If I was going to feel overwhelming envy for a person who only exists in the realm of fairytale, you'd think I'd pick someone cool like Cinderella. Cinderella gets to ride around in a souped-up pumpkin and has a fairy godmother who gives her things. That sounds fun.
But, no. Instead, I choose to go insane with jealousy over Rip Van Winkle's sleep schedule. A hundred years sounds just about right today.
Reason I work for myself #48: So that when someone's having a rough day because they took a super early flight that morning and didn't have time to eat before going to work, I can ask if they want me to drive over with bacon. And I can mean it.
Don't be too impressed, because 1) I demanded sainthood and a lot of praise for this and 2) I already had the bacon and 3) He was only ten minutes away. If he worked in North Hollywood, forget it. I'm not that nice.
Bacon delivery, check. So that's Monday down. Leaving...the rest of the week. Crap. This is why I have to make grand pronouncements. Otherwise I'd never follow up.
That was handy. Thanks, to-do list.
And the winner is...Snoozical! As chosen by the random number generator thoughtfully provided by the internet. Congratulations, Snoozical! For winning at the internet and for that adorable new baby.
I dance like a turkey in public. Then I do it again. Then I do it a third time in case you missed the first two. I threaten to show up at your Christmas party dressed as a Christmas pirate. I might make you go ice skating with me. At some point in our relationship, I will probably eat all your food. I will always eat all
your dessert.
I might come to your house with bacon. But only if you're geographically convenient.
This is probably my favorite music video ever. If I walked into a gym and saw four guys in colorful skinny jeans doing this on the treadmills, I would have to die. Because my life would never again be so full of unrelenting amazing. So, uh, I guess I have to hope that never happens. Following this logic to its inevitable conclusion, does never seeing such a thing at the gym mean I get live forever?
Which is better: Immortality or dudes making unexpected and whimsical use of the treadmills?
I DON'T KNOW. I JUST DON'T KNOW.
Yesterday, I drove from Los Angeles to San Jose where I'll spend Thanksgiving with my family. My only companions were Siri and a lot of caffeine. My new phone arrived a few days ago and Siri and I spent the long drive getting to know each other. Basically, "getting to know each other" equals me pressing her little button and telling her to do things and her sitting there and taking it. I wouldn't blame Siri if she felt a little used.
Siri is good at playing music and a champ at finding the nearest Starbucks. She likes it when you speak clearly to her and only occasionally willfully misinterprets your request. She also sends texts, which is a life saver if you're by yourself in a car for six hours and don't mind sounding like English is your second language.
When I was texting with Sexy Jesus, instead of telling him "Lots of cows. No beer." Siri said "In Calais. No fear."
Siri thinks my life is a lot more interesting than it really is.
In a creepy are-we-about-to-find-ourselves-in-a-Battlestar-Galactica-situation kind of way, getting to know Siri is like getting to know a person. You have to figure out how to talk to her. You have to learn how to interpret what she says. Sometimes she gets your point right away, sometimes she never does. Sometimes she understands your request, but can't do what you want her to.
Three hours into my trip I realized that I'm having a weird little relationship with my iPhone. So I tossed her onto the seat and turned on David Sedaris instead.
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30 Days of Magic update:
Autumn colors. Siri. Allowing emotions to just be what they are. Learning, slowly, to choose what to focus on. Knowing that I can decide where I put my attention and where I spend my time - and those are the things that will flourish. Feeling my perspective shift as soon as I remember that I have to find at least one #magicmarker for the day.
Petting an enormous dog with a gentle face and hopeful eyes as he sat in a chair like a human while his people got coffee in Buttonwillow. Deciding to move to Buttonwillow and buy a house there just so I can write the word Buttonwillow every time someone asks me for my address. Meeting the dog's owners in the caffeine line. They were so happy that I stopped to pet him because, despite his sweet face and argyle sweater, he's still a giant pitbull and sometimes people find him intimidating.
Dessert masquerading as coffee in those red cups. The Thanksgiving poem I wrote in 2006 about a turkey escapee named Fred. Thanksgiving with my family. Going to a whiskey-swilling, boot stomping, bluegrass-listenin' Turkey Trot with friends.
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If you have any #magicmarkers, I'd love to hear about them in the comments or on the Twitters. It's a nice way to procrastinate for a few minutes. As a champion procrastinator (I mean, not to brag), I highly recommend it.