life

Just A Little Gift

/ Kai / Leave a comment

I have spent at least fifteen years trying to figure out writer’s block. Mine, in particular. I’ve taken workshops, read books, even decided that maybe I’m trying to force a thing which isn’t for me (then tried to quit and discovered I’m even more unhappy) I’ve tried to leave writing behind countless times only to find myself right back here, trying to find the door.

The door. It is this place where, once you walk through, you are in deep flow and it all just comes to you. It is like singing a song in perfect pitch, like hitting that spot in running where you can go for miles and miles and miles without end, the dance where every step creates visual poetry.

Up until this morning, I understood a few things about my writing when it is going well and my writing when it feels like every word is an unmoveable block I have to try and pick up, but what I didn’t understand was a very large, very deep ocean. I knew a few things that helped and knew how I came to be in this place, trying to be a writer. I even knew why it was so important to me to get it back – do we ever forget being in a place where every single thing about ourselves falls into place and works as a single machine?

I’d like to tell you I could have come to this understanding faster, but I’m me and being super, uber stubborn is a part of how I relate to the world. This can be helpful and it can also get in my way. Fifteen years worth of in my way, it would seem.

I’ve spent the last fifteen years trying to do things the way the books say. I’ve tried writing poetry, tried stream of consciousness, tried plotting, tried meditating, tried finding inspiration in the works of others, tried all these things, focusing all this time on the world around me because isn’t that where the stories are? “Inspiration, most certainly, is out there, damn it,” I would tell myself. I was determined to chase it down and drag it home, even if I had to beat it over the head with a stick.

This is where I tell you the secret of the universe and maybe you’ll understand it, maybe you won’t yet. Until you actually see what I’m talking about, you can’t understand it on the conscious level.

Everything you need is inside of you. I know you’ve heard that or seen that around lately. I’m here to tell you it isn’t just a meme.

I’ve spent so long looking outside myself for answers. To the point of exhaustion. I was so determined to find it. Have you ever lost something and become convinced that someone else, no matter how ridiculous it might seem, has taken it? I’ve spent a lifetime trying to find an answer for these feelings of loss. I was a writer. I wrote damn near constantly. Then, one day, it was just gone. And there have been times when I have likened it to dancing or running or driving while telling you that being ‘in the zone’ is always the same, no matter what you are doing.

Here is the first clue to the mystery. In the zone, it doesn’t matter what you are doing. You are doing it with perfect timing, flowing so naturally that it feels like this is what you were born to do and you could go on forever. When you aren’t doing it, you are still living that flow, if you are lucky (or smart) enough to be able to sustain that perfect center and you are still lusting after your current project.

The second clue: It can be consciously sustained, but not by grasping at it. Anyone trying to hold onto something, all tight fisted and tense, is already outside of the zone and trying to kick in a door that only opens outward. Your hands are full of sand and the harder you grip it, the more of it slips away. Funny thing about, sand, though. Holding on to it is as easy as loosing your grip and letting it sit in a cupped palm.

I used to write to music. For me, this is the actual key. A clue to end all clues, should I choose to look at it properly. This is where I came to understand very suddenly and very deeply that what I’ve been looking for was in me the whole time and it was because I was looking for the wrong thing that I didn’t see it.

I was looking for words. For stories. For inspiration. And those things are important, of course they are. But, before them comes something else. Think of it as the baseline in a song. The beat. The rhythm. It can change its pace, but it is always there, under the flow of your life. Yes. Yours. And mine. It is the heartbeat of existence. And it is always there. If you are living, it is in you. Connecting with it is the first and only way to get into that fabled zone.

I’ve been listening to shamanic drumming on youtube, lately. These videos can go for up to ten hours or more. I don’t watch them, I just turn on the drums because it gives me a sense of rhythm. It gives me a flow. And, this morning, while listening to them, I started thinking about how I connect to that part of me. I used to sing. I used to dance. So I understand more about music than most. I was in band and could read both tempo and notes on a page. I know that the tone of a song can change based on that tempo. And here is the AHA moment that I’ve been waiting fifteen years to find.

When I first began writing, my best friend would turn the music on. She always chose it and this was something I insisted on. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust my own choices, it was that she had a knack for picking the things that would set me off. Back then, I’d have told you it was the lyrics that did it.

Oh naive and lovely child that I was. Sometimes I’d like to go back in time and pat her on the head. With a stick.

It was not the lyrics. Those were just words I could grab on to and ride. It was the beat that was actually setting me off. I was learning to dance with the pen. I have many, many times said that phrase. Writing is like dancing with words. Like dancing with the muse. Like dancing with yourself. It was something I did with ease. Like the figure skater leaping into the air and coming down on the ice like a butterfly floating, I could grab onto words and just start spinning and twirling and leaping without any effort at all. And I was doing it long before I started really writing; I used to sing to my infant nieces and nephews. I used to make up songs to fit the beat in my head while out walking my Scottish Terrier, Shannon. I used to rap inside my head simply for the fun of it.

Dancing requires a certain amount of relaxation. You cannot do it if you aren’t listening to the music with your whole body. It reaches out and dancing is a form of letting the music flow through you in visual expression. And every single thing you do, from making the coffee in the morning to going to bed is an expression of the beating drum of of your life.

Too poetic for you? Let me make it a little more clear. You breathe. You have a heartbeat. You live in rhythm with those things, even if you don’t realize it. Most of us are zombie walking along, never recognizing that our life is a sort of song. Connect with the beat and really feel it, then everything becomes a visual representation of that beat. Or vibration, if you will.

I have run around for years looking for stories to tell, feeling like I couldn’t connect with anything and wondering who would want to read it anyway. Because, at some point, I lost the connection to myself. The thing I was looking for all this time was not stories, even if I thought it was. It was the deep connection between myself and those shadowed lands we call the subconscious. What I really wanted was the electric shock of being fully plugged into my own beat. Everything else is just semantics. Writing is my chosen form of expression. But, in that place of being plugged in, I could choose to do anything at all. Dance. Write poetry. Sing. Drive. Because it isn’t and never has been the writing I was searching for. It was the beat. And nobody can take that away from you. It is you. Being in step with it is Nirvana.

The moment I fully connected with this thought was the moment I realized the answer I’d spent fifteen years trying to find had been right here all along. I am not ashamed it took me this long; part of what I feel like I want to do is help others. Not just other writers, but others in general. There are so many unhappy people out there, trying to find happiness in their bank accounts. Too many. But helping requires knowing and knowing requires experiencing.

More and more I think we feel disconnected from our true selves. Call it technology or just that this world has become so externally driven, but I think more and more of us are feeling like life is unfulfilling. When you are seeking happiness in the external, the world become a bleak and lonely place; none of those things you thought you needed brought you lasting peace. No matter what the ad promised you, that thing did not serve to offer up a whole new life. And I’m here to tell you that finding the thing that will is truly as simple as falling back into your own beat, discovering its nuances and learning to embrace them. That will open the door to happiness for you.

This is not about a passing, fleeting happiness. This is not something you need to attain or buy. You already own it. You were born with it. And no matter who or what tries to take it away so they can promise to sell it back to you – because unhappy people will buy anything if it promises to make them feel whole again – it is always yours. It is your birthright and you can have it any time you choose to. All you have to do is look inward. Listen. Find the beat of your heart and the rhythm of your breath. Learn to dance with it in all things. Let all the things you do be an expression of your inner song.

There is a movie called Happy Feet. The penguins are forever in search of their ‘Heart Song’. But one penguin can’t sing. His feet, however, are always dancing. Step beyond the fact that this is a child’s movie and pay attention to the message. If you can’t sing, dance. If you can’t dance, drive. Paint. Write. Find the beat. Then find the thing you can use to express that rhythm. That is where you will find your happiness. And I know. It is human nature to want to argue. It cannot, after all, be that simple. Right? And yet it is. When you are happy, you are in sync. You are dancing. When you are unhappy, you are out of sync and you are falling.

I am sitting here, on my couch. There is a dog beside me, a dog at my feet, and one asleep under the kitchen table because he is just too cool to be with us. It is a late, lazy Sunday afternoon. There is a light song in the background as the end credits roll on the movie I was half watching as I wrote this.

I have been in love so deep that the loss of it was a bitter and terrible poison. I have heard songs so beautiful they made me cry. I have walked beneath trees that were growing before anyone had even discovered this stretch of land we call America. I have been disappointed and stepped on, lifted up and loved. And all of this is neatly strung upon the twined threads of my heartbeat and breath. I see that the whole of my life rides upon the song that is me. So long as I hold to that, there is nothing I cannot do.

Finding Heroes

/ Kai / Leave a comment

I spend a lot of time thinking these days. Mostly about money, it seems, one of my least favorite topics. Not because there is anything wrong with money in general, but because I’d rather be thinking about books or adventures or the moon and stars. I am not, honestly, ever going to be the kind of person that finds joy in the material unless it comes in book, dog, or horse form (or cat, if I can ever get back to a cat friendly pack of dogs). Although driving a fast car can always bring a smile to my face.

This morning, I was, as it happens, thinking about writing and how to get better at it. Rather, I was thinking about a man I was listening to yesterday. He had, as a newly graduated business student, decided to become a buddhist monk instead of going off to live the life he’d been brought up to live. He was looking for fulfillment in a world that seems full of unhappy people and he could see that others who had walked the path he was on were throughly disappointed with it. So he decided to chase true happiness instead.

When asked how he had gone about becoming a monk when he’d come from such an unreligious background, he said it was quite simple. He found the monk that was most dedicated to being a monk and shadowed him, imitating his every move; he’d decided that, if this man had found peace, then the student, too, could find peace, but that, in order to find what the monk had found, he felt he had to completely dedicate himself to the model the monk was presenting.

He went to bed at 9 and got up at 2am to chant and clean the temple. He helped the poor and ate nothing but the simple fare provided at the temple. He lived the buddhist monk life so completely and fully that he became a buddhist monk. And, eventually, he found what he was looking for. That wasn’t enough, though; he felt like the next, logical step was to share what he’d learned. So he brought it back out into the world outside the temple.

Being the sort of person that I am, of course this is something I fully want to try for myself. Not becoming a buddhist monk; I’ve found as much spiritual happiness in my hikes through Allerton Park as I ever have meditating and I feel that I’m on a very different life path. I love meditation and often commune with the universe, but I don’t feel the need to climb a mountain and live in a cave. A cabin, maybe, but the solitude I want is the sort for writing, not the sort for deep religious experience. What struck me is that I am a writer that feels at odds with writing, uncertain how to become better and more fulfilled in my chosen career, so I decided to go take a closer look at how other writers I admire work.

This isn’t a new idea; I’ve done it before, but things have shifted and changed. This is true in all things and it is something I suggest everyone do once in a while. What I know I’m capable of has expanded. What I’m willing to do for my writing has changed drastically. What I used to think had to come naturally, I’m now willing to work for, if that allows me to write the stories in my head. I’ll change my entire way of being right down to how I eat, if it will help me understand my writing and maybe decide exactly why I’m still so determined to do this instead of looking for another passion.

Now, I have plenty of writers I admire. Terry Pratchet, Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, and Maya Angelou to name just a few. But, somewhere in the midst of this question – how do these writers write – I came across a secondary question. Who are my heroes? Because writing, riding horses, running, it is all really the same thing in the end. You have a passion, you work for that passion, and the models should all come into the light because, sometimes, it helps to think outside the box.

And something very strange happened when I asked that question. Who are my heroes – real people only, no fictional characters – and why?

I couldn’t answer. Not one name popped into my head. Not one person came up as someone I hold up to the light as the shining paragon of who and what I want to be. Even a second grader can answer this question; it is human nature to have heroes. Yet there I was, nothing but silence as I reached for a name that wasn’t there.

I often listen to audiobooks as I drive. For me, there is very little difference between reading the words and listening to them. I’m fairly sure that this is part of how I ‘see’ things when I write or read or listen. It is often just as vivid and alive as a movie on a screen and the manner of the imput doesn’t much seem to matter.

Today, either because I was a little disturbed by my inability to call to mind a singular true hero – at least one that was an example of what I want out of life – or simply because there is a book I wanted and, lacking the money to buy the hardcover, decided to use one of my audible credits (which often collect outside my attention because I like to listen to the books I already have a few times before moving on).

The joy of this particular book – Waypoints – is that was written by Sam Heughan (star of Outlander) about a journey on foot through the Scottish Highlands and the actor did us the favor of reading it as well. And, treasures abound, he took actual voice notes during his journey and INCLUDES THEM. I highly recommend the book so far, if we can get a little off topic for a moment. In this case, the Audible version offers you something the book itself cannot which is the sound of a man on an epic journey he was very much not prepared for during the raw, real moments when he realizes he might just be in over his head.

Anyway. Call it happy chance or fate, maybe a little bit of both, but I ended up with this book today, listening to this guy. He reminds me forcibly of myself in certain aspects – I am actually quite impulsive and, had I the money, might have stopped halfway through this book to take off on a month long hike in the wilds just because there is such a romantic and wild vibe to the idea of just jumping off that cliff without bothering to look first. As someone who actually has spent time camping and being out of doors on long hikes, I do encourage everyone else to not be like me. Do your research; Mother Nature will have no pity at all on you.

Maybe it was his Scottish accent – I’m partial to a good Scottish voice. Or maybe it was the open, honest way he exposed his faults. He didn’t even try to pretend that his idea had been made in a calm and rational manner. But I found myself falling a little in love with this guy, despite having avoided Outlander based on the knowledge that there is a whole lot of sexual abuse going on. Like me, I’d say this man has a way of landing himself in way over his head and then deciding that, to hell with giving up, let’s just swim like we knew what we were doing all along. Sometimes that works. Other times you end up calling for a rescue and trying to explain why you decided to fuck around and find out.

Listening to him got me to thinking about my life. I do have heroes. My parents, for instance. Both of them had faults and I don’t think that either of them actually got where they wanted to go. Maybe that is why it scares me to call them my heroes. Because success in the traditional sense wasn’t in the cards for them.

Or maybe my idea of success is too limited; they didn’t come from a generation that loved money or fame. They came from a place where owning a house was considered the end all be all goal and they attained that. They were good people that never sacrificed their morals for cheaper versions of themselves. They had a family and they had plenty of reasons to get up in the morning. I know my father was often frustrated with how little we had, in the material sense, but he lived and died as a good man who did not compromise his ideals to make things easier on himself. Even when it was hard, he was honest and kind and generous. My mother was a tough woman and often difficult to deal with, but she was no less honest or hard working herself. They were people who believed in working for what you want and helping others and they brought me up to be the same.

Every hero on my short list has one thing in common. They are ordinary people who had ordinary lives. Some of them, as in the case of a mentor I had when I was very small and learning to deal with a heart defect, had a tragically short life as well. Not a single one of them can be found in a movie. No-one has written a book about them (yet) and they haven’t saved the world – although there may have been plenty of animals and children whose worlds they changed for the better, so that is debatable.

So there I was, listening to this drop dead gorgeous man expose himself as a complete nut who wakes up one morning and decides to hike nearly a hundred miles through the highlands in late fall (trust me, it takes a brave man to do that with training) with zero preparation, and I resonated with him on every level.

He didn’t come from a family of actors. He didn’t have anyone telling him that he needed to follow in their footsteps. Yet here he is, succeeding at it and completely uncertain how to deal with having fans who recognize him on the street as his character. He’s a man I can connect with because I too decide to chase after mad impulses with almost no idea of what I’m doing and, on those rare occasions when people have read my books and see only the writer, I am utterly hopeless in knowing how to respond. And, best of all, he makes me think that maybe it’s okay that I don’t have a million bestselling heroes to list off because, in a lot of ways, that leaves me plenty of space to be the odd, impulsive little duck that I am.

At some point, I found myself driving along one of those long, empty fields that dominate central Illinois in early winter. The wind was blowing hard today and there are empty corn husks rolling over the road. The sky was a wide, perfect blue with few clouds and the occasional flock of long necked geese flying overhead. In the air over the broken, stubbled remains of this year’s crops, a hawk was fighting the wind to stay in place as it hunted for lunch amid the untilled rows. And I felt a deep affinity with this animal.

I have spent my life fighting the current of an ordinary life, a river of wind that pushes me back from my desires and tries to hold me here. Yet, like the salmon, I cannot stop my push for home. It is not in my nature to turn back or give in. I don’t have a hero to name for you. No ordinary woman who grew up trying to chase a crazy dream, no man who found success despite how ordinarily forgettable his family might have been. But I ended the day feeling like I don’t really need that sort of hero. Success isn’t about the amount of suffering you have done. Nor is it about chasing someone else’s version of what you want. Success is sometimes just jumping up and declaring that you are going to hike a hundred miles then refusing to quit when you realize that you weren’t exactly prepared for the journey. Really, that could be a good description of life itself.

I know these posts might seem odd, like I am looking for validation. Really what I’m doing is trying to find my path through the woods. I’m beginning to understand that I can follow the model of someone else for a while. But, in the end, it has to be my journey and I’m going to have to do it my way. Writing these posts is helping me sort out a little bit more of what that looks like. And sharing them with you means I’m not writing in a vacuum. Creating needs the artist first. Then it needs the breath of other people. Or, as Stephen King says in his book On Writing (paraphrasing): First you create for yourself and you do it with the door closed. But, then you have to write it the second time for everyone else and the door open.

Dread Not

/ Kai / Leave a comment

Isn’t it funny how often we dread something, drag our feet and complain, only to discover that it is the very opposite of what we thought it would be?

Monday’s. They are the bane of anyone in a job like mine; they are the end of your free time, the day when you have to go back to work and try to be a sensible adult. For me, they tend to remind me that I am not living the life I want – not completely, anyway.

This is what is funny about that. I have a job driving. More specifically, I have a new route and it is more country than town, a welcome relief from last Christmas, when I was stuck in the city and dealing with the ever increasing irritation of fellow drivers facing the holiday season.

Driving has always been a form of creative fuel for me. I do meditate by sitting still, the traditional form, but my favorite meditation is country cruising. At one point, I knew the country roads around my hometown so well that I knew at least six ways to avoid the inevitable floods that cut everyone else off from escaping in spring. Driving was always my answer to any sort of writing block when I was younger. As an adult, it gave me a way to deal with my anxiety, which began to really take hold in college.

So, as you might suspect, I actually do like my job. It isn’t my dream by a long shot, but I don’t hate it. Usually.

This morning, though, every step toward it was full of resistance. Maybe it was the rain that kept me from the forest yesterday or just that my DnD group didn’t get to murder so much as a single orc, leaving me with the sense that my weekend was incomplete. Either way, I was fully against work today. In my head, I was certain that it was going to be an absolutely horrible day and why the hell do I have to work this silly job anyway?

I won’t go any further with my inner monologue of whine. It is enough to say that this is the same voice that made sure I was always at the very limit of sick days during high school (though I had far more reason to avoid school than work). Even though I have long outgrown that kid that would tap out at the slightest sign of a (fake) cough, I still had this stone of dread in my stomach all the way there.

I didn’t really have so much to do, but, at some point, I did realize that the stone had melted away. That is about the time I started thinking about dread and what it really is. Like anger, it is a signpost. It is delivering a message that needs to be translated. This is why driving is good for me; there is a lot of thinking that can be done on the right country road and a whole lot of ideas are born in those empty cornfields.

I have known for a long time that I’m not living the life I want. I have spent a long time trying to decide the best way to move toward that life. There aren’t a whole lot of rules when it comes to creativity that can actually be expected to work on a regular basis. You can’t beat the muse into submission – found that out the hard way – and you can’t bribe it. It cannot be shamed and talked down do. Flattery means nothing and begging will get you nowhere.

In ancient times, Celtic bards were considered sacred, almost monk-like. They were thought to be getting their songs and stories from the divine. They would go into small rooms, cover any windows, and light a single candle in order to ‘hear’ the voice of the divine, the Oran Mor – the Great Song. I probably don’t need to mention that plenty of them were driven near madness; this is not a job for the faint of heart because there is no set path. You can work and work on something and end up with nothing. All too often, artists in all forms end up living an unfulfilled life, angry and bitter, because they just cannot find the answer for their own creative path.

I think my dread this morning speaks to that fear. I like my job. But I don’t want to live out my life as nothing more than a delivery driver. And, when it comes to that, I think a lot of us can understand that feeling. I don’t know how many of us are actually living the dream. In fact, I suspect there are a whole lot of us that don’t even know what the dream is.

I think a lot of us have an idea, but we are fuzzy on the specifics. Or, like me, maybe you built the specifics off someone else’s ideals. I love to write. But I’m not really sure, these days, what sort of writing I want to be doing. I know I need to be walking in the direction of my dreams, but I also know that I need to really understand what that dream is. Do I want to write fiction or take you on real life adventures? Do I want to go back to poetry or is there something to be found in writing a spiritual blog? I can’t completely answer these questions. But I want to.

This week, I’m dedicating myself to figuring exactly what I want. I’m setting myself to certain tasks and plotting out my youtube sequence to listen to those who know exactly what it means to go chasing after a dream that everyone else says is impossible. I want to know what it sounds like and looks like when someone realizes their dreams are diverging from the ordinary model. I want to know how others have found their own way in the creative minefield. And I want to see if I can’t figure out exactly what I want to do with my stories.

And so I put it to you, my friends. What is it you dream of? What did you want when you were younger? What do you still want? Is there some way you can bring that into your world? No-one says you have to quit your job and move to LA to become a rock and roll singer. Maybe it is enough just to buy a guitar, learn to play it, and entertain yourself after work.

Real change can begin as such a small thing. The grain of sand in the oyster’s center. I’ve always tried making big changes because that’s me. I tend to do things in drastic measure. But, right now, I feel like the answer to this daily type of dread, this fear that, a year from now – or ten – I will still be right here, talking about Monday’s and overdue bills, is to take small, certain steps to identify the little things that I can do to have a bit of my dream right now. Even if it is no more than a moment, it is a moment spent moving in the direction I really want to go.

Check Your Attitude

/ Kai / Leave a comment

I’m not going to lie. This started out as a very different post about gratitude and how I’ve been getting more and more in touch with how I feel about my life, what I’m grateful for and what I never knew I needed to appreciate. I had it all planned out, which should have been my first clue it wasn’t going to go quite the way I envisioned; the universe has a wonderful sense of humor and its absolutely favorite way to show it is to see exactly what I have planned and see how it can turn it all around. Alas, my abundant gratitude is not today’s story.

Today is about perception.

Mine, to be more clear, since I lack the psychic ability to look into anyone else’s head and tell you how the world looks to them.

I could tell you that I see rainbows and roses everywhere, but I promised not to lie, even if telling the truth makes me look a little like an ass. I’m more of a skull and crossbones kind of girl with more sarcasm than sunshine in my head. It suites me. Unfortunately, I’m also the girl that tends to see things that aren’t really there.

We could call this a hold over from my childhood; I was bullied by family and classmates alike and I tend to be good at picking out nasty smirks, these days.

Well. I say I’m good at it. So good at it that, sometimes, I see that smirk when it isn’t really there.

Or hear it.

This is where I tell you that part of what I’m about to relate might make you uneasy or might make you think differently about me. Someone once told me they were surprised that I could get so caught up in the thoughts of others because their first impression of me was of a woman who does not give one crap about anyone else’s opinion of me. At my strongest, this is true. I have told even the people I love best where to stuff their version of me.

Today was not one of those days.

I believe that part of growing is being able to admit your faults. Now, I have been bullied. I have heard people laughing at me behind my back. I’ve been betrayed, lied to, lied about, and let told that I’m weird. I’m not everyone’s cup of tea. In fact, a lot of people find me too strange to allow and make it their mission to try and change me. These days I let them go ahead and make fun of me because it says far more about them than it does about me. In fact, I’ve found that the way others see you tend to reflect the way they see themselves and has nothing at all to do with you in the first place.

This, of course, can be reversed. How you see others says something about how you see the world. Most days, I see other people as generally decent, but also need a little kindness and, on occasion, a good kick in the pants for being buttheads. We are all stumbling around in the dark wood of life and not a damn one of us really knows what is going on. However, today was one of those (now) rare days when I found myself irritated simply because other people exist.

Someone cut me off in traffic on my way to the bookstore – I needed their wifi to deal with the mess that has become my WordPress blog. “I hate people,” I growled. The car next to me hit a squirrel. I watched the poor thing get tossed into the ditch and there is no way in hell it landed still breathing. “What a jerk,” I growled a little louder, glaring at a man who was driving one of those pickups that always make you question if they even know what a hay bale looks like (Judgy? Oh hell yes). Yet another person was tailgating me and others were beeping their horns impatiently (at me or at someone else, I didn’t know) and all of this was further cranking the wheel of my irritation with the human race.

By the time I actually reached the bookstore, I already had that tingle which says ‘hey, you, better be looking closer at something going on inside.’

This tingle, call it my emotional spidey sense, is a familiar prickle at this point. I’ve always been self aware, but the the first surprise of getting to know myself was seeing just how little I actually knew about the person in the mirror. I decided, at some point, that I needed to develop a relationship with me the same way I would with another person. The first rule is respect and this was surprisingly difficult. Familiarity breeds contempt, they say, and they are certainly not wrong. I’ve made it a priority to listen to myself as much as possible, lately, but, sometimes, I forget about my promise and it rarely ends well.

Into the bookstore I went. The planner I use to track my writing activities is approaching it’s final month and I’ve been eyeing one that is of the same design – while refusing to pay twenty dollars for something that I’m only going to throw away. Black Friday may be over, but Barnes & Noble is turning it into a weekend event; my planner was half off. I could have looked at that and let it be the thing that turned my stormy attitude around.

Funny thing about a bad mood. If you nurture it long enough, it gets big enough you can’t see around it. The planner was half off, but so was my temper. If I get around to that gratitude post, I may bring this back to the table; learning to embrace those small things is key to releasing the older version of me so I can be happy. I did not focus on my luck that the planner, which is beautiful, was both half off and still in stock. I was determined to be grouchy.

I went to the cafe, ordered something small and sat down to work on my blog space. I was half growling, annoyed further to discover the theme I’d originally used for my blog was no longer available. I was working on the banner for the home page, glaring because I couldn’t remember how to make the black box in the middle transparent, fussing over fonts and colors and just being in an outright muggle mood.

And that is when I heard a half stifled, snarky little giggle.

I could take you back to high school right about now. I could remind you what it feels like when a group of someone’s is laughing at you, trying to make it look like they aren’t, and fully hoping you realize they are, in fact, laughing at you. I could bring you back to that sweaty, hot moment of shame that seemed to accompany those moments, even when you’d done nothing wrong and didn’t know why the jackals were giggling. But I’m going to suggest you stay right here with me. Because, for a minute, a very un-evolved version of me was alive and ready to bite someone’s head off right then and offer it up as a blood sacrifice to that nice little corporation sign that has come to universally mean over priced coffee that tastes like sadness, charred beans, and pumpkin spice.

That version of me was born somewhere in between the point of graduating high school and discovering the man that I married was always running me down behind my back. Built of anger and betrayal, it is both oversensitive and aggressive and it is my least favorite mask. That version of me loves dogs and horses and kids and is absolutely not someone you want to laugh at if you are a grown adult because she will leave you hysterically sobbing in a corner somewhere, possibly suffering from PTSD, and unsure if you will ever feel safe out in public again. It is a version of me that I’ve been working to send back into the void; people do stupid, hurtful things because stupid, hurtful things were done to them. They are cruel because that is the only way they can feel better about themselves. Somewhere inside of them, they harbor a seed of self loathing that has sprouted a dark and poisoned tree. And a group of college students is always so ripe with self doubt and fear that it sometimes amazes me they can manage to get out of bed in the mornings.

That’s what this was, by the way. A group of college students in their mid twenties. But, before we visit this group of sleek, perfectly dressed little children convinced that their life would never turn around and bitch slap them (ah, sweet innocence), let’s talk about the emotional alarm tingle of doom.

You see, that tingle was pretty much a full on fire dance at this point. ‘Pay attention, pay attention,’ it said. ‘Take a look at you. Look in, not out.’

Now, there was a time not all that long ago, when I’d have listened… eventually. But, first, I’d have gone full death glare, possibly even unhinged hell angel of ‘you decided to try it, now I’m going to verbally tear your spine out.’ Hell, I was dressed for the occasion; I’d walked in wearing my long black coat and, I’m sure, looking like an escapee from Wednesday (Go. Watch. Now.) because I really was feeling my inner grim reaper earlier.

I’ve spent two years working with this explosive and vengeful side of me. Two years. I still make mistakes; everyone does. But I knew the consequences of letting my mouth speak before my brain was asked for the best course of action. So I did not jump up from my seat to go incinerate anyone’s ego with my fury. Instead, I took a breath. This is still a new thing for me; I have to consciously choose to stop. There is something odd about being bullied. Some people never seem to come out of that dark room where they are regulated to being unpopular and unwanted. Others, like me, decide to take over the room, put on the crown, and declare themselves the queen so that nobody mistakes them for weak ever again.

I got really good, at one point, picking out what people didn’t like about themselves. I never became that woman who puts others down to make herself feel better, thank god. But. If you crossed me, if you pushed me to my limit – which usually involved one of my kids (my little band of outcasts gathered from every corner of the world), dogs, or anything helpless – I would use my extensive vocabulary to flay you alive. Some would not see the problem with this; most of the people who have seen me in this mode stomped across a clearly marked line and right up to the end of my loaded canon. They got what they were asking for.

Just one problem with that. I didn’t get away without a little hurt of my own. Once the fire died down, I had plenty of burns of my own to tend. Once you’ve been bullied, you don’t forget that feeling. It is not one you want others to have to feel. Even if you might think they do deserve it a little. Everyone has a story and a tragedy. Everyone deserves at least a little kindness.

It is not up to me to decide who gets chewed out and who doesn’t. Most people, if they are truly worthy of it, will get that karma at some point or another. Whether they learn from it or not is also not my call. That is why it is called free will and no matter what our government may think, nobody gets to step on that. I have no desire to be the one doing the teaching these days. I’m on a different trajectory. One that includes listening to that tingle and figuring out where I’m coming from instead of worrying about what other people are thinking about me.

So I listened to my inner cricket. I started thinking about the guy who cut me off. I’m not going to make that okay; always check your blind spots and don’t assume the other driver is paying enough attention to avoid an accident. You will be at fault. But. Had he hit me, I wouldn’t have been hurt as we were going too slow and I pay my insurance for a reason. The driver that hit the squirrel couldn’t have stopped; it ran under his tires, not out in front of him and, had he seen and hit the brakes, the car behind him would have hit him going fast enough to make the accident ugly. The tailgater sniffing my tailpipe wasn’t trying to piss me off, they just weren’t paying enough attention. The people honking weren’t honking at me. They were honking at each other for some reason that had nothing to do with me.

My sour mood was not about other people. I didn’t want to leave the house this morning. My bills are pressing on me a little, causing me to worry. I was having a nice little snuggle with my dogs, but, because I’d set myself to getting the blog cleaned up and ready for a newer, better version of my writing, I made myself go out.

Sometimes, you need to let go of ideas of how the day should go. You can (and should) say ‘hey, don’t actually feel like doing that right now’ and let your plans change. This is part of honoring who you are.

I’m not telling you to ignore what’s important. Kids need fed. Bills need paid. But blogs can wait. My irritation was born of my need to spend a day curled up on the couch watching youtube with a good dog. Strange as it may sound, it is sometimes important to rest, even if it means putting something else off. In not listening to that voice, I was disrespecting myself and, just like an overstimulated child, it was bent on being unhappy with every little thing. I was looking for a reason to be angry and I found plenty of them.

Now. About those college students.

I looked up, aware that, whatever they were trying to do for themselves by snickering at me, it was their issue to deal with. Only, they weren’t looking at me. Pretty much the only time any of them looked at me was when I walked past and there was nothing malicious in it. The girl was looking at my hair. It is extremely long at this point and gets a lot of girl attention. You know the kind I’m talking about. Remember those three little girls in Rapunzel that get to braid her hair? That look.

The rest of the kids barely knew I was in the room with them. They certainly weren’t laughing at me. They were having a good time, enjoying their coffee and their conversation and it wasn’t about me.

Let me say that again. It wasn’t about me.

That, my darlings, is what perception is. It is the story you tell yourself and it is wholly within you. It has nothing to do with the people around you, what they are thinking about you, what they are saying, even if they ARE looking at you. Some people would have heard that laugh and taken it as happiness instead of snark. Others would have snapped right up and demanded to know who they thought they were laughing at, causing all sorts of drama to ensue.

Your life mirrors your perception. You see what you want to see. Your perception is born of two things. Today, yes, but also all of your yesterdays. How you behave is directly wired into who you have decided you want to be. This is what the buddhists call the ego; it is how you identify and, good or bad, it is a lens through which you see the world. The beautiful part of this is that you get to decide every single day who you want to be.

Sometimes you get up, realize it is a day for puppy cuddles and mindless youtube. You listen to that little voice and you have a good – if not quite productive – day. Or you don’t listen and get all the way to a coffee shop and nearly traumatize a pack of college students because you thought an abandoned blog was more important than your own needs. Change isn’t easy for me; I resist it on every front and when I get something into my head I often cling to it. Even if it means steamrolling my personal needs.

Perception is directly related to how well we are listening to ourselves. Our ability to deal with the little uglies in the world, like honking horns, traffic drama, and snarky laughter is very much linked to the attitude we decided to put on. It can and will change on a daily basis, if you let it. Hell, sometimes, it changes by the hour. You do have control over it, though. You can listen to what it is telling you and know that, whatever it is you need or need to avoid is part of becoming better balanced in a world that is always trying to push your buttons. Don’t listen and the unheard, unseen voice will choose your attitude for you. It rarely chooses a happy one.

The buddha said ‘you cannot control the world, but you can control your reaction to it’. I think that, if we taught our children to decide, first thing in the morning, what they are and aren’t up to for the day, we’d understand that this phrase isn’t about shaming yourself into better behavior or letting others walk all over us. It is about knowing where you are for the day. Learning to watch and listen to ourselves is a vital part of change; the unconscious get up and rely on who they were yesterday to tell them how to be today. They are on autopilot and this is an empty life lived as a sleepwalker. The person who observes themselves has the ability to choose who they are and what they want out of life.

Today was not a day for me to be out in public. Today was a day to be at home, writing you a little note about gratitude. I wanted to tell you how I made toast lathered with butter and fresh strawberry jam. One of my customers made the jam from her own strawberries and gave me a jar of it after I delivered her husband’s medicine; they were about to leave for Florida for the winter and needed the medicine to show up before they could leave.

Had I been listening to myself, I could have written that story for you today, then camped on the couch in my pajamas watching Dead Like Me and loving the little things. However. I’m living by a new philosophy that is very much based on the Native American belief in using every part of the animals they hunt. Maybe I shouldn’t have left the house. But, in a way, I’m glad that I did; I got a good lesson out of it. In the end, I can’t change the past. I did leave the house. I did have a few little moments in there where I let myself slide backward just a bit. But I can still use that. I still had a story to tell.

Tomorrow maybe I’ll tell you all about those strawberry preserves and how I toasted my bread in a pan on the stove because my toaster vanished somewhere between the house I rented when I first came home, my sad, one room caregiver life in my mother’s basement, and this house, which has become a far happier place than either of the others. Or maybe I’ll take you with me into the forest for a hike. Or maybe I won’t write at all outside my usual three pages. I don’t know because that is tomorrow and, like I said before, tomorrow is going to have to take care of itself; I’m busy with today.

Join Us On Patreon!

https://patreon.com/KaiyaHart?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=creatorshare_creator&utm_content=join_link

A New Day Is Dawning

/ Kai / Leave a comment

This morning dawned in vivid pink. I did not expect to be awake to see it; I have the day off work and, unlike my usual weekend days when I get up to go hiking and watch the sunrise in the woods, I did not plan to get up early at all. The dogs had other plans. I got up to let them out because, in their estimation, they absolutely could not hold it any longer and were, in fact, starving to death, so loudly demanded that I attend to their needs.

Once up, I could not convince myself to go back to bed. Instead, I went into the small room that doubles as a closet and office to write. Every day for over a year, this has been the most important part of my morning. I get up as early as I need to, start coffee, tend the dogs, then head upstairs. Every morning I go, no matter what, to write three pages. Most mornings, these pages are just rambling complaints or hopes or despair of every actually being able to write something shareable ever again, but at least I’m writing, I always say. Which is a huge improvement over the days spent thinking I should be writing and not doing it at all.

At one point, I paused to look up and out the window. There were clouds, but not the gray, flat sort that usually dominate Illinois winter skies. Instead, these were like the waves on an ocean, an illusion further perpetuated by the rising sun, which was being unashamedly flashy, edging the clouds in brilliant pink so that it looked like water meeting the shore.

The sunrise still enthralls me, even after a year of seeing it nearly every day; I used to be a night person and struggled to get up even an hour earlier than I needed to. I’m still fairly slow and generally am lucky to be able to get myself dressed with any real precision. But, sometimes, something is so important to you that you will move your own personal stars for it and, for me, writing is that thing. I accepted, some time back, that I may have to give up writing. But, before I did, I wanted to truly try every single thing. It has become the way I start my day and now the day would not feel right without it. On days like this one, I find more than one reason to be grateful that I’ve learned to embrace morning life; sunrise is worth being up for more often than not.

Thanksgiving – most holidays, in fact – don’t mean much to me these days. I have family, but I’m not completely welcome among them due to not quite being normal. This is fact, not a cry for sympathy. I used to try and fit in, for their sake. That is a thing of the past. The more I’ve focused on becoming a less polite version of myself, the less they want me around. Not that I ever was really one of them to begin with. Without my shroud of ‘here, let me hide that uncomfortable trait for you,’ my wool has become an even even darker shade of black and I stay away. Not just for them, not just because I can’t make them comfortable, but for myself as well. I can feel how much I disrupt whatever vibe they are trying to produce and it pains me. In choosing to abandon the polite version of myself, the one that, even if it wasn’t welcome, was tolerable, I’ve made a total outcast of myself. I’m not sorry. I enjoy my solitude. But this is why holidays no longer hold any real importance to me. It is a day. Like any other day. I’m going to stay home and do me and that is what is best for all of us.

Something about that sunrise seemed to say this day was going to be different, though. I laughed it off; it was to be a day of bingeing Wednesday (Wednesday Addams is my favorite among all my childhood heroes and Tim Burton did NOT disappoint) and I did, actually, do that. It was going to be a day of napping and reading and not one thing was going to change today. I’ve given up on anything changing. I’ve been in limbo so long I’ve started to accept that life really is a hamster wheel. I was going to do my pages and expect exactly nothing else out of myself. How could it be any other way with me locked up in my house, refusing to move from the couch (utterly without shame; I’ve got a pretty comfy couch)?

I admire the ingenuity of the universe and this is why I cannot give up on the idea of a divine consciousness; I see too much humor in some events, too much careful orchestration in others. And, sometimes, you ask a question and get back something so blatantly an answer that you actually can’t pretend it is a coincidence.

I was scrolling through Facebook during end credits and the next episode in the show, not really looking for anything. That is the way it has been for me for a good, long while. I’m not looking for anything; I’ve given up on finding it. For the last couple years, I’ve been broken down to a point of near despair. I won’t go into detail. Those closest to me know the truth – shoutout to the niece who always manages to shine a light on my shadows – and I’ve kept mostly quiet to everyone else. Especially in the last year. I had asked a question, though. It is one I ask a lot, at least ten times a day.

The past week or so, I was to a point where I considered giving up writing for good. Yes, for over a year, I have written a minimum of three pages a day. I have written three books. None of which are suitable for reading. I have come to a point of knowing that, as much as I love to write, I don’t have an anchor – something to hold to, a mirror for my life and an undercurrent which becomes the glue of any good writing. I had begun to believe that I would never do more than my rambling, senseless morning pages ever again and was working hard to accept that, but I won’t pretend that this didn’t raise a very important question.

Then my finger paused on a post. Facebook algorithm usually has about as much intuitive sense as a rock through glass. I look up something on the internet and, immediately, Facebook seems to think I want to see more. I usually don’t. Curiosity does not always mean continued interest. But this page was one of those rare, perfect bullseyes that has struck home and stayed with me. A writer who views the world through the lens of her horses. That is her anchor. A horse who helps her see magic in even the most mundane. The writer is insightful, poetic, and witty and I often find solace in her posts.

Today, she spoke about the nature of a cold, wet day with horses which involves only the most basic of care, the days when, rather than having fun. Horse people understand these days. This is the difference between being a horse person and being a princess who rides; when you own a horse and have to care for it yourself, you slog through the mud and muck to make sure these animals are well tended. Even on the worst of days. In blizzards, hurricanes, and tornados, the horses still need to be cared for and no one else is going to do it. These are the days you drag yourself out and freeze for the sake of another creature before fleeing back to the hearth, hair damp, shivering, focused only on getting a cup of hot something to chase the chill away, knowing you’ll have to do it again that night.

This writer started her post with that; it was one of the between days. No magic. No shinies to be found. Just wet, cold, and miserable for the sake of the horses. “I had no story today,” she said. Then a story, small and beautiful, presented itself and she became suddenly, completely aware that, in fact, there is always a story. Then she went on and pointed out that being a writer means we can sit in a shed with a single, narrow window and find the story in that crack. That is, she suggested, the very purpose of a writer. Find the story in the cracks.

And a crack opened in me. I became suddenly and totally aware that the universe was answering the question I’ve been asking. “What?” I kept saying as I wrote my three pages. “What?” I asked when I realized that it looks like my day job is gripping me ever tighter and starting to look like a forever job. “WHAT?” I screamed when I realized that I can’t go back to the writer I once was that, as romantic and beautiful as those days were, they are gone because that version of me is only a memory. The full question, of course, is ‘What the hell is my purpose and when are you going to show it to me?’

But I need to back up a little. At one point last week, I was ready to admit defeat. Maybe writing is not what I’m meant to be doing after all; I’d just had a moment of realizing that the real difference between the writer I once was and now was that I used to believe in happy endings. I wrote because I believed. I still do, but I’ve been questioning if I will ever have any happiness for myself. If, in fact, there are some people who don’t get to have any true happiness, no matter how hard they look for it and if I might be one of them. This one blog did not change that, exactly. I begun believe that, if I want to keep writing, I am going to have to write about what is in front of me, rather than what I want to believe. I believe that every story has a victory arc (or lesson) if you look close enough. But every experience I’ve had for the last two years has said that a lot of things are just bad without any silver lining. I was, in fact, losing my faith in silver linings and happy endings all together and the problem rises when I also have to say that I’m not interested in happily never after. Certainly I’m not interested in writing about it.

Last week, I realized that I don’t want to write pretty lies anymore, but neither do I want to write the dark and bitter tales that seem to dominate adult fiction; I firmly believe there are lessons in every loss, but those books only look to hurt, not to give you the understanding. They leave me with the sense that I’ve been cheated because, damnit, if someone has to suffer, can’t they at least get something worthwhile from the experience? I detest such endings. In my estimation, stories are a sort of contract between writer and reader. The reader trusts you not to crush their heart beyond all hope and the writer agrees that, while there will be plenty of suffering, there is always meant to be a rainbow after the rain. It won’t last, but that is the nature of life. It isn’t supposed to be all up or all down.

I would not call myself an optimist, but if I have to focus on nothing the bleak and weary, if I have to give up and admit that maybe there really isn’t a sun behind all those clouds, I would rather not focus on anything at all. I refuse to bring more darkness to a world that already has more than its fair share. I refuse to give you the stories that give you the sense that there is nothing at all worth fighting for anyway. Screw that. It is the easy answer. But it is not – for me, anyway – the true answer.

This morning I got up, trying to accept that, maybe, my day job really is all there is for me, this constant struggle to get from paycheck to paycheck like a child leaping from stone to stone over the river all the meaning I will ever have and that would mean I can’t write anymore because I wouldn’t be able to believe in sunshine, but also couldn’t bring myself to tell anyone else to give up. No sun for me doesn’t mean no sun for anyone, if that makes sense. Maybe there wasn’t going to be a win for me, but that doesn’t mean you should stop trying for yours and screw any writer who tries to steal your hope because they lost theirs (huge pet peeve). But I digress.

I would not be writing this if I had not stumbled across that blog two seconds after I demanded of the universe what it wants of me for, quite without exaggeration, the thousandth time. Literally. Two seconds. I asked. And this blog post popped up under my scrolling finger. A perfectly timed answer to me wondering what story I could possibly have left to tell or why anyone would care. An answer to me trying, desperately, to see what I can actually write about without talking incessantly about the extreme wrong turn my life seems to have taken. Two seconds of me wondering if there is anything to share with you that would even be worth reading when all I have are the small things.

“Where the hell is my purpose,” I have repeatedly demanded. “What do you WANT from me?” I have been losing patience with ‘divine timing’. Now there is a phrase I loathe because it is not about clock time. It is about being ready for what is coming. You can’t get the gifts that are waiting for you until you have to done the work to be ready for them. And I have been angry because I believe that I have done the work. I have reached inside and looked at all the ugly bits. I have worked to understand and accept myself, flaws and all. I’ve shed so much skin I feel scraped raw. Yet nothing was changing. I got up, wrote my pages, and felt no inclination to write anything else. I go to work, come home, cuddle my dogs, and do whatever I have to. But there was no fire. No desire to write this post. No desire to try and find a story because if felt like all I could do is either lie about being happy or talk about bitter disappointments and neither appealed to me.

I was waiting to feel ready, but it wasn’t coming. And, even though I believe that getting inspired sometimes means doing the dry writing to stay limber, I was losing hope. And, in losing my hope, I was losing my will to do anything that looked like living. And then, in reading her very short, very honest description of what a writer actually does, I saw the flaw in my belief that I was ready for change.

I believe that true happiness comes not from what you have in material wealth, but from fulfilling your purpose.

I’m going to pause here and tell you about purpose. It isn’t something you don’t want to do. It is something that, once you’ve found it, you feel like you cannot live without it. It is not likely to be another person, but maybe it means being a mother or a teacher or helping abused horses find trust again. For me, I always thought it was writing. I always thought that the mystery of me began and ended with writing and finding a way to feed my muse. A purpose is not some magical stone thrown at your head and, while you might struggle with aspects of it, it is the thing you return to again and again. And, at one point, I was willing to relinquish my pen and admit that, maybe, I was overreaching myself because, let’s face it, not much worthwhile has come out lately. I surrendered myself to whatever force governs such things and waited for an answer patiently (for me). An answer that did not come.

It did not come because I wasn’t ready for the truth.

If you happen not to believe in a divine intelligence, I am unlikely to be your girl because some things just cannot be unseen once you see them. I do not have faith in something more because of a book. I don’t quote scripture and I believe religion is just something created by humans to try and lock others down (because humans work in fear and restraint all too often, and seek to exclude others so they might feel important. Everyone wants to be the chosen one). God, in my estimation, is part of us and the moral code is something written in our DNA that has nothing to do with exclusion or hate and everything to do with love. Enough said; my beliefs are mine and I have no need to argue anyone else over to my side. If you aren’t hurting anyone, then I have no quarrel with what you believe, let’s leave that there.

This question of purpose has plagued me for nearly my entire life, but particularly for the last five years. Then, two years ago, something happened which created a tsunami of destruction within me. Many people, no matter their religion or beliefs, will recognize the term ‘Dark Night of the Soul’. Oh what a beautiful way to say ‘utter destruction of who you thought you were’. I broke. Not in a gentle way or a romantic way. In a very ugly, very intense way. I won’t tell you I’m healed. Half the time, I’m fairly certain that I am lost in a very deep, dark wood and there is no way that I am ever getting out. I question my existence constantly at this point.

But.

I have been playing with certain ideas. Not just ideas of books, but something else. A blog.

The blogs I tend to read are spiritual ones, yes, but they also have their boots on the ground. I have never had – and certainly have no patience for now – people who go on and on about all love and light. Something in me loved the idea of a sunshine and roses world that didn’t know what shadows looked like, but knew it wasn’t the truth.

I have always believed balance is the truth. The sun needs the moon, the light needs the dark. Humans have shadows, all those things we bury and refuse to acknowledge and those who state that everything needs to be positive and sunny all day every day are only digging holes and burying bombs in themselves. Bombs that will one day go off and rip them to shreds, if they aren’t careful. Everyone does it. I certainly was doing it, even when I told myself I was being honest with myself.

The blog I wanted to write would be much like the ones I read. A place for the stories of life, a place for lessons to help others accept themselves and see the beauty around them, even when their tower was getting struck by lightning. But I was lacking something. I knew I had to find something to hold on to or it would just be another thing I abandoned in a few weeks time. ‘I don’t have any stories to tell,’ was always the answer I gave to myself. ‘Who wants to hear about me delivering packages or running off to the woods to watch the sunrise on my days off, even if I do see some wisdom in learning to navigate being me?’

The truth that resonated in me earlier was the realization that I’ve been running around trying to find the big stories. Trying to find Thor’s hammer to build a house instead of using the hammer I have. Every single day things happen and, given how we view the world, they can be good or bad or just an experience. In every experience, there is a lesson. The moment the other writer spoke of finding the story in a single crack of sky, I saw the truth. I’ve been trying to knock the wall down instead of looking out the window. I’ve been trying to create big stories instead of learning from the small ones. Trying to create a million dollars without accepting any small change. I could say this a thousand ways. It all means the same thing.

Sometimes life gives you big lessons and they change you in a big way. A man breaks your heart so throughly you never want to date again. A mother dies or you walk away from a toxic family member instead of fighting to stay. Someone loses a limb and has to learn to live without it. But, more often than not, God whispers instead of screaming. The true story isn’t in the moment of death. That is just the inevitable, inescapable end. The real story is every single day, mixing the feed, being present enough to notice when your horse is asking you to look up through the rain and the wind and notice that, weather be damned, they still expect you to hear them when they speak, that today isn’t just another day, they still have a story to tell and you are expected to listen. The answer is not a million dollar book deal or winning the lottery or the moment when you are financially secure enough to quit and never look back. The real story is how you got there, what treasures you found along the way while you were living your ordinary life. Purpose isn’t just about those big moments. Honoring your purpose is what you do when all you have is a single crack to look through.

I still don’t know if anyone will care about any of it; I do see stories in everything that happens to me, some of them the sort that could be wisdom, if I was feeling inclined to admit it, but will anyone actually find anything worth keeping in them? I don’t know. However, that seems to matter less today. Maybe because the answer I’ve been waiting for reached up and more or less smacked me upside the head. This was never about giving something to someone else. It was only ever about finding the story for myself, in the ordinary hours, and having faith that I’m meant to be writing them down. Just in case someone else happens along and needs them.

I cannot explain what it means to resonate with something. I can describe the way if feels, as if a small, warm bomb has gone off inside you. It strikes deep. It strikes true. And it leaves behind a sort of ringing that fills you from the center out. The moment this other writer spoke of finding the tiny gift of a story hidden in this gray, rainy morning with her horses, between mixing the feed and getting ready to bolt back to her warm, dry house, I understood that this was my answer, that I was being told exactly what the universe needed me to understand. My purpose is to write. Not to question if I’m writing the right way or if I am going to piss someone off. My purpose is not to care about every little snowflake that might take what I’m saying the wrong way or think it is about them. It isn’t to worry about supporting myself with my writing or to care if I ever find a way to make that happen. My purpose is to find the goddamned story and write it.

And so. Today is Thanksgiving. And I am sitting here, aware that I may be committing myself to this today only to discover that I cannot bring myself to write another word for you in the coming weeks. That likely isn’t the case. There is far too much I have to say to fit in to one little post. But. My own self doubt is often my downfall and I have spent a very long time drinking from the fountain of societal expectation. I’m not promising you tomorrow. Tomorrow is going to have to take care of itself. What I am saying to you right this minute is that a new day is dawning for me. Call it radical acceptance; I don’t care if I ever make a cent off this. I don’t care if anyone reads it. My purpose is not to worry about becoming an influencer. My purpose is just to write the damn story. And. If writing is meant to be my purpose after all, then, by God, I am going to chase that rabbit like it stole my cupcake (and I REALLY like cupcakes).

I know that it may sound strange that I talk about messages from the universe. But the honest truth is that we all get them. Most of us don’t listen. In my case, I asked for answers, but did not want to actually see them if they didn’t fit with the personal story I was trying to tell. The thing is, you aren’t communicating with something outside of yourself. If it makes it easier to swallow, understand this: All of this is inside us. We already know the answers. Some, we just don’t want to accept, so we block them out and keep telling pretty lies. The dark night of the soul is the moment when we can no longer believe those lies and have to face ourselves, good or bad, exactly as we are. The moment we surrender to that is the moment when we truly step into our power and can start to really grow.

On a side note, I love Tim Burton, Wednesday is amazingly well done, go watch it.