Tears For Fears
It's been three months since my last post. If I rewind my life over those weeks and weeks, I can see a trend that's happened throughout my life: God - Family/Friends - Work. This is the magical trifecta that I juggle. And by God, I do mean the Great Creator, the Divine, Nature, Breathing, all of it. It's often distracted me from my work. The divine joys, the excursions, the moments of bliss, they all combine to take me down the lovely and always-enticing road of pleasure. So I've worked very hard to avoid indulging myself in that side of life. I focus a few precious moments on connecting with the greater life forces around me and beyond me, and then drag myself back to the day, the present, the Work.
For those of you keeping score, yes, I left that mind-number, dollar-crunching scenario and took more money out of my deep reserves to continue writing. When you cry three times in a week in your work, because of your work, it's time to go. I never cry at work, and rarely in real life, so I'm taking this as a sign. Crying is a sign of the heart. When my little Sparkling Star asked me if I wanted drugs (after a minor heartache situation), I told her no. I want to feel this, I said. I want to feel everything. So I felt my emptiness, and the cold-heartedness, and left that work for my real Work.
My time has also been spent on caring for FAMILY. I took a sojourn to Portland to work on the script in early January, and returned again in March to help my cousin with home renovation and arranging the final moving pieces in their new home. It was a literal shit-show, as one by one we went down with the flu - baby mama, baby, cousin, me, nephew. A relentless stream of gag-inducing ugliness I can only compare to a spigot turning off and on, with bouts of stillness (disguised as disgruntled sleep) in between. After returning, I spent two days at home, and then drove 6+ hours to the SF Bay Area, where I swooped up the little niece and nephew to kidnap them for a crazy spring break full of Disney, beach, family, Universal Studios/Harry Potter, and home activities like chess and painting. On Friday, I drove them to the airport and then headed back to Disneyland, where I met up with the lovely Twin Fish to celebrate her birthday in the best way we know how -- riding rides and dining on gourmet foods at the Food & Wine Festival. Yesterday was the Sparkling Star's birthday so again, out all day. And now I just finished some fine-tasting turkey sausage and pancakes. I'm pooped.
On the WORK side, I've made huge progress on this new and very fun script, and the characters are appearing as if they have lives of their own. Whole scenes and conversations have magically sprung out of nowhere. And while I seem to hit the wall at the same point in all of my stories (don't we all?) I trudged through it, and discovered some tools to help myself. Whether that includes more research, conversation, jumping to other pivotal scenes, revising - it's all a part of my little tool chest that I'm putting together to make my passion - my Work - better, more efficient, passionate, meaningful, and full of life.
Next: Capturing that ever-important gust of wind to fill my sails, I'm leaving tomorrow for a week in Sedona, Arizona. Alone. To write. It will be me leaning into my soul, pushing against time, and embracing God more fully. Investing in myself, in the Spirit, and in the Work. I'm not afraid of this. I've worked hard to get here. I've focused nearly all of my energy on building an internal canvas to draw from. My heart is rich. My soul is deep. My mind is full.
Leaving your fears and insecurities behind
For those of you keeping score, yes, I left that mind-number, dollar-crunching scenario and took more money out of my deep reserves to continue writing. When you cry three times in a week in your work, because of your work, it's time to go. I never cry at work, and rarely in real life, so I'm taking this as a sign. Crying is a sign of the heart. When my little Sparkling Star asked me if I wanted drugs (after a minor heartache situation), I told her no. I want to feel this, I said. I want to feel everything. So I felt my emptiness, and the cold-heartedness, and left that work for my real Work.
My time has also been spent on caring for FAMILY. I took a sojourn to Portland to work on the script in early January, and returned again in March to help my cousin with home renovation and arranging the final moving pieces in their new home. It was a literal shit-show, as one by one we went down with the flu - baby mama, baby, cousin, me, nephew. A relentless stream of gag-inducing ugliness I can only compare to a spigot turning off and on, with bouts of stillness (disguised as disgruntled sleep) in between. After returning, I spent two days at home, and then drove 6+ hours to the SF Bay Area, where I swooped up the little niece and nephew to kidnap them for a crazy spring break full of Disney, beach, family, Universal Studios/Harry Potter, and home activities like chess and painting. On Friday, I drove them to the airport and then headed back to Disneyland, where I met up with the lovely Twin Fish to celebrate her birthday in the best way we know how -- riding rides and dining on gourmet foods at the Food & Wine Festival. Yesterday was the Sparkling Star's birthday so again, out all day. And now I just finished some fine-tasting turkey sausage and pancakes. I'm pooped.
On the WORK side, I've made huge progress on this new and very fun script, and the characters are appearing as if they have lives of their own. Whole scenes and conversations have magically sprung out of nowhere. And while I seem to hit the wall at the same point in all of my stories (don't we all?) I trudged through it, and discovered some tools to help myself. Whether that includes more research, conversation, jumping to other pivotal scenes, revising - it's all a part of my little tool chest that I'm putting together to make my passion - my Work - better, more efficient, passionate, meaningful, and full of life.
Next: Capturing that ever-important gust of wind to fill my sails, I'm leaving tomorrow for a week in Sedona, Arizona. Alone. To write. It will be me leaning into my soul, pushing against time, and embracing God more fully. Investing in myself, in the Spirit, and in the Work. I'm not afraid of this. I've worked hard to get here. I've focused nearly all of my energy on building an internal canvas to draw from. My heart is rich. My soul is deep. My mind is full.
I found this picture when I was randomly searching under the word FEARS. The element in this picture is not the person out on the wire, but the wire that he's come from. Look at it. Look hard. It's jumbled. A tightly wound wall of steel wool. Every piece of information, every person, every obligation, responsibility, care, that's what it looks like inside our brain. It's a hard-wired mess. The magical part of this is that this symbol has been with me for decades. Most of us have recurring dreams. Mine? Surrounded by steel wool, jumbled wires, sometimes tighter, sometimes looser, sometimes inhaling and exhaling, trapping me. My heart skipped a beat when I saw this, because I believe this is a very literal translation of where most of us are. How to escape? Focus on rebuilding and recreating. Unwind the mess.
Having officially invested myself in the trifecta of life and willfully jumping into the next phase, I'm sharing a few final thoughts: Focusing on that far distant mountain, I can feel the wind blowing and the mountain breezes. Time travels along beside us. It's in our power to choose how we spend it. There is no doubt it takes focus and discipline to stay true to a path that resides only in your soul. In the end, we wind up older, somewhat wiser, and able to look back at the seeds we planted along the way. I hope that we can all look back proudly on that forest we planted, inside and outside ourselves.
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