Part 1 - from January - the questions

January 1st I made a promise to myself that I would write more.  I would journal, and I would write more on my blog about where I am in my life.

Have YOU seen me posting?  No?

Me either.

Not for lack of things running around in my brain you see. Just lack of...what?  Focus? Ambition? Discipline?

I'm not sure.  Perhaps it is what Steven Pressfield calls "resistance".  We resist the things that are most important for our soul's growth.

I've spent too much time wallowing in my life, worried that I'm doing it "wrong".  The experts (and there are MANY of them) would be giving me all sorts of advice and I'm trying to follow it, but it just isn't working for me.

I'm trying to be logical in an emotional body.  I'm trying to grasp at my power by looking in the wrong places.  I'm trying to be linear where I'm more of a circle or spiral.

I used to think that the ideal life would be to have a job teaching at a university, and have a quaint little house on the south side that was kind of hip and modern, filled with art and books, and that I would spent my free time reading intellectual books and magazines and newspapers and would be very informed about the state of the world, and the middle east, and American politics, and all the rest of it.  We would eat organic food and be kind of square in that upwardly-mobile yuppy kind of way.  We'd drive a volvo or some other practical kind of car.  I'd be liberal in my outlook and yet embody white middle class privelege.  I'd be able to carry on in-depth conversations about politics from local to global, and would be responsible, "adult" and, well, kind of beige.  A perfect grown up.  Comfortable. 

Who am I instead?

I'm a maybe-wannabe-was-I-ever-really-a-classical singer, I suck at time-management and have little to no business skills although I am self-employed.  Part of me yearns to be accepted and respected as an intelligent, articulate and educated intellectual-type, but really I am more of a slightly neurotic, lives in my head but-wants-to-be-more-of-a-fully-integrated human being with body, mind and spirit all living harmoniously.  I strive for and yet also hate too much routine.  I am someone who is always seeking balance and then hates living in a static state.  I have been raised with a strong Protestant work ethic, and I have intellectually rejected it although not practically or fundamentally.  I think somewhere in my secret soul I believe that life has to be hard, I tell myself that I enjoy challenges and that anything that's too easy is a trap.  I wish to be a free spirit, but I have too much guilt.  (Shoulda been a Catholic...?) I am passionate about social justice, but don't have the stomach for it - too much dissension causes me so much upheaval and throws me way off-kilter.  In spite of living in my head, I think I am actually very much a do-er and a make-r, not a thinker.  Too much reading bores me.  I cringe at myself for even writing that, but as much as I would love to be that person that could curl up on a couch with some tea and read for hours and hours and hours, I'm not.  I get too antsy and have to get up and do something.  I need to be busy.  I have more ideas than I could ever complete in several lifetimes.  I have a lot of energy but it's totally scattered, so I rarely finish the things I start, but I also never feel like anything's good enough to be called "finished".  I used to find such comfort in singing, and in the exploration of self, and the necessity for self-care it required.  Gotta take care of my instrument, right?  But it's been feeling a bit hollow for a while now and I don't know if it's because I've lost touch with a fundamental part of myself or if it's time to let go and move on.  Am I just too lazy to get back into shape?  And if I weren't, what would be the point, since I'm too old now to have a career?  I feel like a fraud as a music teacher since all of the things I am advising my students to do are things that I'm not doing. I know in my heart of hearts that my place is elsewhere - since day one I had a strong intuition of "I don't belong here", but I don't know where I DO belong.  I'm afraid to give up my identity as a singer because I have invested so much into it and I fear letting people down, as well as fearing that maybe I failed at the thing I was supposed to be doing here.  Perhaps if I tried a little harder, gave a little more, tried again - but smarter this time.  Do I get a "real" job? Is that giving up or just moving on?  Maybe taking some time away from my life would give me perspective and I could re-energize and strategize how to approach things.  Or am I just giving up?  Will I start a job and get sucked into a life of blandness just to pay the bills? Or will I find the juice my life has been missing?  Will the structure of time and the regular paycheck free me from fighting with the least successful elements of myself, and allow me to explore more than I thought I could?  Allow me to travel and to enjoy life instead of struggling? What kind of example am I setting for my child?  Am I just being a quitter?  And how do I know? Do I need to sit still and quietly in the receptive, feminine, yin mode and wait for guidance? Or do I need to take action and then see where it leads me?  What is the "right" way to proceed?

 

Part 2 - from May - the answers

There is no place to "start" this story as it is really a series of spirals curling into each other and overlapping in unexpected ways, so I will simply begin.

I watched a commencement speech given by Jane Lynch.  It has been floating around Facebook for a bit. She talks about the advice generally given to people (especially artists) and totally turns it on its head.  One thing in particular that stuck with me is the part about giving back.  She says don't do it.  I think it was some of the BEST advice I've ever heard.

Now before you have the opportunity to think poorly of me, hear me out.  Basically what I took from that is the following.  If you are giving because you think you must give, the potential to be a martyr is pretty high.   If, on the other hand, you are happy and fulfilled in your own life, you will naturally give of yourself to people without even realizing it and it will be glorious because it will not diminish you, and it will enrich them because they will not feel as if they are taking from you. It was another way of saying this:

And then I learned the spiritual journey had nothing to do with being nice.  It was about being real, authentic.  Having boundaries.  Honouring my space first, others second.

 And in this space of self-care being nice just happened, it flowed not motivated by fear but by love.

BOOM.  

(I would love to credit this quote, but can't read the name on it! If anyone knows who coined this, please let me know, it's fantastic!!)

Then, there was a book I just happened to grab from the library.  I was there the other day picking up something I had on hold, and thought I should grab something light for entertainment.  I grabbed a couple of books from the "staff picks".  One of them, a teen fiction, I gave to my daughter, and she devoured it in a few days.  The other book, I sat down to read this morning and it has touched me and cracked me open already in several ways.  The first and probably most important way is that the woman who wrote it is a visual artist. VISUAL artist, not writer - and yet she has written this wonderful book that I am enjoying immensely.  Huh.  So one could be, say, a singer (just as a completely random example) and also write. Hmmm....

In this book that is reminiscent of Elizabeth Gilbert's "Eat, Pray, Love", the protagonist makes an exit strategy from her life and embarks on a quest to find a new and better life for herself.  She writes about letting go. Letting go of her old preconceived ideas about who she is so she can discover who she really is.  In a moment of self-reflection, she lets the last bit go and forgives herself for "...prior judgements of not being good enough to be just who I was."  She let go of the identity she had crafted around her work, and just became herself.  I love this moment.

I think about my own identity and the confusion this creates. I sing - people enjoy it, I enjoy it, I stop. I write - I enjoy it, others enjoy it, I stop.  What the actual F%$k am I doing??

At first I thought my lack of discipline and follow through perhaps meant that I need to "let go" of my identity as an artist and creative person.  But no.  I don't think so.  What I do need to let go of is my identity as a struggling artist, as a struggling anything, really.  Maybe, just maybe, it doesn't need to be this hard.

I think that maybe the hard part is letting go of the idea that it has to be hard.  The hard part is trusting and allowing.  When people say "That was awesome!", be grateful, taste those compliments and then keep working. And if the compliments don't come, be grateful that you can enjoy what you do without them.  Compliments should not be the only thing that inspire you to continue, nor should they scare you into standing still because you fear success.  Just enjoy the work.

The last piece of the puzzle clicked in to place in conjunction with a conversation with my husband yesterday. He kicked my ass and told me that if I was going to serve my gifts, I would have to commit to them, and discipline myself to work at them daily.  The notion of discipline seems so confining and "grown-up" and boring and beige and BLECH.  I chafe at the notion of discipline and perhaps if I'm honest, I chafe at the notion of being a grown-up too.  Because to me, real grownups are about responsibility, and duty, and logic, and stability, and steadfastness - none of which are particularly bad things, but what they are not is spontaneous and vibrant and sexy and alive and juicy and fulfilled and joyous and creative and all the things I aspire to be. Then today I read in this book about this introverted woman parenting her inner child to do what was best for herself, even though she didn't want to.  And I realized that discipline doesn't have to be authoritarian and rigid and strict and utilitarian.  Discipline is love.  Discipline is loving your child (inner or otherwise) enough to get them to eat their vegetables and go to bed at a reasonable time. Sometimes this happens through coercion, and sometimes you have to be firm.  But what you don't have to be is mean.  It all comes from a place of love and comes by setting rules and boundaries. 

Today Facebook reminded me that several years ago I published a blog posting and people really enjoyed it and I got some amazing feedback from it, and actually inspired people. So here I am.  Round-about and spiralling, in a completely non-linear but totally authentic way, I am here.  I write, I hope you read, I hope you enjoy, and either way I love the process and myself enough to keep moving.