My Reality

 

A plume of salt and spent air and force crystallize the sky.

Inhalation. 

Focus on the curly edges of the kale leaves, I told myself (over and over) when she said, “You keep bringing emotion into this. Just stop. This is reality!” She listed off all the ways in which I was CLEARLY not within the realm of which she spoke. The leaves blurred into the wooded horizon as my anger and resentment welled up and overflowed in a tirade of words. 

 

This was not my intention.  

Teeth clenched, fins in motion.

I wanted to be calm, non-reactive, mature, but in the heat of the moment the thirteen-year-old in me leaped into (re-)action. The thirteen-year-old that was grounded for unfounded reasons and spent weeks writing dark poetry in her room. The girl that was told she was a spoiled brat for being independent and doing what she wanted. That was full of vitality and creativity and wide-scoped dreams and was (is) mocked for “being dramatic." 

Deep buried resentments spy-hopped at the surface. An ocean of relationship rippled and shook.

Instead of breathing into the pain, doing my shadow work and all that woo (goodness), I yelled back, teeth bared. I accused, I cried. I’m not proud of this, but it happened. My head spun with all that I wanted to say, how I wanted to be understood. But how can you be heard if the other doesn’t want to listen? How can I keep my heart open to others who have closed theirs so tightly, especially when my throat is tight and my hands are clenched and I'm yelling and I really really really don't want to be but I can't seem to help it? 

And what the fuck is reality? 

I am breathing, feeling, living every day and every day is real. My dreams, thoughts, and emotions are real. Even my fanciful imagination is real. So when I am told that I am not living in reality, I am confused. This confusion has been happening my whole life. From theater school to traveling around the world to living and working on boats to living on an island and growing my own food, I haven’t lived a particularly mainstream life, but this has no bearing on whether or not it is real. 

I am real therefore my life is real. Reality.

Flukes in the air, diving deep into the dark, thoughts swim and circle around reason. 

After the pain and sadness slowly receded alongside the anger (not disappeared, but ebbed enough to breathe), I have been able to see this flood of emotions as a call to contemplation: what do I believe about myself and my world? I know that what anyone else says or thinks about me is none of my business, that accusations strike a nerve in this way only when there is doubt within myself about my skills, intelligence, about how I live my life. 

What a gift to have this brought to light, I say through gritting teeth and tears.

So. What do I believe? What is real to me?

Here is the reality (in this moment) that I create:

People are good. I don’t want to believe that everyone is out there to fuck me over. If that what is supposed to make me a good business person, then I don’t want to participate in that kind of business. I’ve built my businesses on love, connection, and beauty. There is no need to be nasty, just honest. If we could all just be honest about what we need a lot of the nastiness would be avoided. This is what is real to me.

I live in a place where I can grow a lot of my own food and buy/trade for the rest from neighbors. This is not an idealistic or a hippie lifestyle. I’m not sure what being a hippie actually is. I do wear dresses in the garden and have potlucks and craft nights on occasion. Does that make me a hippie? If growing your own food is hippie, I’m not sure what the opposite of that is other than co-dependent capitalistic matrimony (in which I am woefully still engaged to a degree). Growing one’s own food and buying locally is much more practical and sustainable than relying on the industrial food system for far less nutritious food. It is also far more “traditional” than how the majority of Americans live presently shopping at Target and Costco and buying strawberries in January. Growing food is not a luxury. It takes hard work and planning and effort. The callouses on my hands are real. The kale and garlic on my dinner plate are deliciously real.

I enjoy my work. Whether it is sailing or cooking for other people, I like how I spend my waking hours. Not 100% of the time, but much more often than not. I have worked hard and created this way of life for myself instability (flexibility) and all. Sometimes it feels like I just fell into these passions. I believe that is what happens when you say Yes to what you love. And it is not that simple and easy and the bumps along the way are reminders of this, but those bumps are meant for refinement and growth. I want to spend my time doing something I feel strongly about in the way that positively affects the world. For me, cooking with food from my garden and from smaller farms in my area is revolutionary. I start and join in conversations about nutrition, local economies, self-sufficiency through my job. And I eat well, too.

I am not in the camp that JOB must equal SUFFERING. This is my reality.

I love what and whom I love. I might not get society’s approval but I cannot follow what this society implies I should love. Or whom. Age, gender, profession, appearance…my heart chooses and I am learning to follow, to let the judgments fall away and keep my heart open to the infinite possibilities of love. Why impose restrictions when the world is infinitely generous? This is realistic.

My reality is based on love and emotion. This is what makes us real, just like we learned in the Velveteen Rabbit. This is what children inherently know. I don’t want to shut my heart off in order to be “successful” because in my eyes that is a very empty success. And unnecessary. I wouldn’t be able to write or connect with people or cook beautiful food without this love, without this openness for emotions. This is my reality.

I’m sailing to Alaska in a month and, I admit it, am scared about dying. About my life changing. Of leaving a comfortable farmhouse for rough seas- what's the point? This is what is bringing me alive in this moment. I am immersed deeply in the contemplation of my life, realizing what is most important to me, accepting who brings me alive and who drains my vitality and how I can release the latter. I could die, this is the reality, but this is also the reality every single (safer?) day of my life. Or your life. My question is: can I die with an open heart, whenever and wherever that may be? Death is real.

I surface again, nicked fins, broken teeth, full belly flopping into oncoming waves. 

I am in love with my magical, fantastical life. It hurts sometimes, too. But I choose to believe in the full range of feelings and possibilities, that we are here to create and love and play and swim through it all. This is my reality. 

What’s yours?

Freewrite Fiction: Stars

In case you’ve been wondering, we have sailed through skin and sky. 

We reach up to where the two meet and cannot feel the difference. 

You hold a star in your hand, fingers cradling dust and light, waiting for me to blow at the universe, waiting for me to create a new milky way against the dark path we have traveled. 

Instead I lift my other hand to meet the first and cup the brilliance in my palms. 

 I don’t want to let go. 

You put your arms around my waist, tell me drop it all. You know it won’t last. Or it will burn through my fingers the older it gets, the longer it sits and invokes what we thought we would never say. There is a silence in the night that we can’t wrap ourselves around and so we walk on, afraid to be still, afraid we will disappear in the nothingness we have sewn from the sky. 

Where else can we go? We ask over and over as we fall down hills and run down valleys. Past the old cabin where you loved me so deeply, rough against pine floors and cobwebs, black widows watching us from clouded windows. 

You held my hand, fingers intertwined, you lifted me up and over the threshold and led me over the beach, mussel shells crushed beneath our feet. 

 It all seemed so easy then. 

You whisper to me: Let go of the stars. Stop reaching so high. 

All that you need is right here around you in perfect constellations for your happiness.

Wanting more on the horizon

I'm reading a book called "The Art of Non-Conformity" by Chris Guillebeau. It is my second time reading it. I'm starting to wonder if I should try to find a book on conforming because given my track record I think I'm pretty well versed in the non-traditional life path thing. Yet I'm still buying books seeking THE path for me (occasionally enough not to be depressed or obsessive but frequently enough to be harboring nagging feelings of "is this enough?").
The reason I'm reading it for a second time is that in the interim I've been living a non-conformist life working when I want or feel I need to, taking off weeks at a time, traveling for no other reason than traveling (OK- and eating), visiting all the people I care about across the country whose first questions to me when I ring them up usually are, "Where are you?" then "Where have you been?" But I'm not really sure if I'm doing the non-conformist thing right. So I picked up the book again.

Chris says a lot of the things most success coaches say:

Be passionate about something.
OK, got it. I am. About a lot of things: sailing, cooking, eating, traveling, growing things, the health care system, nutrition, writing, photography, the ocean, hiking through trees with the smell of wet dirt wafting through dead leaves.
OK, wait a second. What's a passion and what's a "Like?" I'll have to construct a diagram or something with lots of concentric circles and lines to help me figure this one out. No, really, it's fun and it works.

It's better to work for yourself than the man.
You got that right. I think. But hey, don't we all work for the man? Who is this man anyway? Even if you "work for yourself" you are always depending on someone else to exchange something of yours whether it is time or a product or skill for their money. So whether its for a big corporation or running a B&B or freelance writing, you're always working for someone else. Yes, some conditions are better than others. Some hours are better than others. As someone who has basically avoided the cubicle I know that I prefer my office to be the cockpit of a sailboat or a coffeeshop with my laptop in front of me rather than a traditional space even if my income is less secure. But hey, I hear Apple has a pretty cool gym on campus. With yoga! I could get used to that.

Take responsibility and be willing to work hard.
I alternately see myself as a lazy piece of crap or an annoying busy body who can't even sit down to enjoy the chips and dip (homemade!) at her own birthday party. I know I can work hard. It's that taking responsibility for my actions that I've had trouble with. Flitting from job to job and project to project has kept things interesting but sometimes I feel like a under-cared-for tomato plant. You see, to make a tomato plant thrive and concentrate on bearing fruit you need to snap off the little branch offshoots that start to form in the crook of the main stem and branches. There are far fewer branches on the mature plant but the fruit has been the focus and is bigger and tastier. If you let the plant just do its thing it gets all bushy and full but the harvest is meager. I feel like I create those branchy sugar stealing diversions and have lots of branches to take care of and therefore lose sight of making sure the fruits I'm growing (this season at least) are the best they can be.
So I get it Chris. Maybe what you are saying is I need to work hard and take responsibility while focusing on that passionate goal. Sounds easy right? Because a lot of us work really hard. And are passionate. But we forget that we can mix the two because hey, that might actually bring us more happiness and what would we do then? Stop buying how to succeed books for starters. And have a job we like. But then what we would complain about over happy hours drinks?

Don't listen to naysayers- they just want to bring you down, man.
I do agree with this one but I don't think that it's always easy to differentiate the Debbie Downers from "those that really care about your happiness" from those who are actually giving you really good advice. But I do know that it is hard to live an unconventional life without people constantly asking, "So what are you going to do when you settle down?" Valid question for many people. It is good to have goals. I just don't seem to know what settling down means anymore. I tried it and wasn't very good at it for very long. Or at least the version of "what settling down means to me" that I created for myself. I was no more happy or secure than when I've lived out of a duffel bag. I might argue I was less secure in a house with a car in the driveway and oven mitts on my hands. Perhaps the timing was off or perhaps I was trying too hard to conform.
I guess I would just phrase this tip differently. Instead of "don't listen to naysayers" I would say "learn how to really listen to yourself- not the egotistical, needing-to-please-others self, but your Gut." It is harder than it sounds when we have so much chatter around about what life should be but I am learning (slowly) it is possible to shut that out and just listen.

Chris says some stuff that is different from the typical get rich quick gurus though (like the stuff above these are not quotes just my interpretation of what I read and what resonated with me):
Make a comfortable amount of money but don't have money be the goal.
Live with less attachments but don't forgo simple luxuries if you can afford them (like lattes).
Find a way to help other people.
Avoid sacrificing opportunities for adventure to "save up" in the traditional way to fund a retirement day 40 or 20 or even 2 years (get rich quick!!) from now. You don't know what the future holds so while you should still take responsibility for savings, live now.
He actually doesn't push for retirement at all, just having a secure independent income. Which I totally agree with. The happiest, healthiest old people I know never fully retired. Or if they did retire from their "career" they jumped into something else. Sitting on the couch eating crackers all day does not a happy person make.

So I'm done with the book. It was a quick read, I took notes. I'll try not to lose them in my wanderings. Is it going to radically change my life? Probably not, but there were some good reminders of why I do what I do even if I don't have the independent steady income thing down yet.

Why did I write about it? Maybe just to let all the people who think that they have "conformist" lives know that even us non-9 to 5ers want more too.
Or that we can all learn from each other even if we think we know what the message is before we start listening to what the other person has to say. Because I'm sure I could learn something about living fully even from one of my favorites like Rush Limbaugh or Michele Bachmann. Maybe. (cringe)

Conformist or non, we're all just looking to be content. And if the Apple gym holds the key to contentedness please Mr. Jobs consider my non-conformist resume.

note: I'd actually love to hear about other people's experiences with this book. Does it seem radical or basic? Did it inspire you or make a non-conformist life seem more impossible? I obviously skipped over a lot of what he said in the book and I do think it is worth a read for anyone.Unless of course you're totally, 100%, undeniably content. Then I want to read your book.