Leaving Room for Magic
How not overscheduling myself led to an invitation to photograph Paris Fashion Week
I’ve been over-scheduled since I was 14. Juggling performances, rehearsals, work, a relationship and a rich social life is pretty much all I’ve ever known. My calendar was a puzzle that I was constantly trying to solve. If plans ever canceled, I typically had two or three backups to fill in the space.
My life was ruled by the Zero Time Quandry: it will take me longer than Zero Time to get from here to there, but that’s the approximate amount of time I have to not be late to my next appointment.
It was a stressful way to live. I was forever speeding from one thing to the next (and stressed that I would get a speeding ticket)… until I realized that speeding at 90 mph would get me there less than 4 minutes sooner on a 15-mile drive than going the speed limit. Why not leave 5 minutes earlier and not be stressed the whole way?
After five years at my job raising money to feed hungry families, I declared a sabbatical for myself and spent a month in Paris. I decided to try something different. I didn’t try to optimize the month. I didn’t buy any guide books. I didn’t get a data plan for my cell phone. I didn’t make any plans outside of booking a sweet little studio for myself on Airbnb.
There was a spaciousness to my days that I had rarely experienced before. Days to flâner (to stroll) around the city with no agenda beyond seeing where the wind would blow me. And even if I did have plans, I would go with the flow if circumstances recommended a different course of action; instead of being sad that a walking tour got rained out, I happily holed up in a café to write (my Hemingway days!) and met up with the Parisian I was dating instead.
Most days, I would grab my guitar and wander over to my favorite park. But if I passed an art & wine festival along the way, I’d stop to look at the offerings and chat with the artists. If I saw a scene that caught my eye, I’d go photograph it. When I got hungry, I’d ask a local for a recommendation on where to eat. At the restaurant, I’d ask the waiter what to order.
And, in not trying to optimize my time in Paris, I had one of the most amazing months of my life. The friend of a friend invited me to join her friends in an indulgent evening of wine and authentic French food and art spanning multiple venues that could only have been curated by true natives. A musician invited me to perform with him while I was waiting out the rain during a visit to Sacré-Coeur. A photographer showed me all of her secret spots to capture the Eiffel Tower from unique vantage points, framed in unexpected ways.
Sure, I would have had a great month in Paris if I had planned out every day; it would have been an Alisa-optimized month. But in allowing experiences to unfold organically rather than trying to control every detail, I had a Universe-optimized month. And that was orders of magnitude more magical.
The experience of approaching my days with a sense of spaciousness had a lasting impact on me. When I returned to the States, I started deliberately carving out space in my schedule. Initially it was perhaps only once a month. But eventually I came to see the value in having unscheduled time in my calendar every week to accommodate the unexpected, whether it was a spontaneous adventure or something that needed to be taken care of.
So when I found myself in Boston for a few days last fall, I took a decidedly different approach. Instead of scheduling every meal — the way I had the last time I was there, because it’s where a lot of my college friends stayed post-graduation — I only reached out to a handful of people.
I left a lot of room for magic.
And so it was that, on my second day there, I had an afternoon free to wander. And I let the wind blow me over to Faneuil Hall. Where I heard an amazing musician sing a song that I didn’t recognize but definitely sounded like something that would be on the radio. I put some money in his guitar case and asked if he’d written the song, and sure enough, it was an original.
I stayed for the rest of his set, photographing him and singing harmonies to all the covers I knew. He eventually brought me up to the mic to sing a few songs with him, and we both loved the way our voices sounded together. It turned out he was performing at Faneuil Hall again the next day, and he brought me my own mic to sing a set with him.
After the set, I took him on a photo shoot, and he declared the images I captured of him to be the best thing he’s ever done for marketing his music. He ended up being so happy with the photos he invited me to accompany him on his next big music gig…
…And that was how I was invited to fly to my favorite city to photograph an amazing musician who was performing at Paris Fashion Week. Which led to the most epic photo shoot of my photography career to date :)
What I had always thought of as seizing the day or sucking the marrow out of life was perhaps rooted in fear that I wouldn’t be able to do everything I wanted to in this lifetime. A friend of mine finally advised, Instead of trying to cram everything into this year, try taking an 80-year perspective on life…there’s time and you don’t have to do it all at once! I might not be able to do as much now that I’m not constantly overscheduling myself, but I’m definitely enjoying everything that I do experience a lot more.
However long my life ends up being, and whatever I do or don’t end up accomplishing, I know that I’ll enjoy this lifetime so much more by leaving a lot of room for magic.
