A Diet of Tears Does Not Feed Your Dreams.
Recently, a friend asked me to test his prototype of a life visioning kit. His dream is to help others find theirs and achieve it. So, I signed up. I was to reserve 2–3 hours and take the time to write down all my dreams, all the major chapters that I felt I wanted to happen in my life, and map out a timeline of sorts to help me accomplish a majority of my dreams, hopes, and goals.
I procrastinated. No, I fucking panicked, reading the document. I’m 26 and at still, at times, I wish for a wind to blow me to the right direction. I wish for a pigeon to poop on the person I should marry. I wish a path would appear in the form of breadcrumbs and gingerbread men.
So I reverted to my greatest inspiration; the playlist I made for myself when I left home for the first time. The 17 year old me knew that she had to be her own champion. So she made a playlist to remind herself consistently that big girls don’t cry and hips don’t lie and toxic isn’t all what it appears to be.
*This playlist kept me from calling home for the first 6 months and my first year of college being utterly broke, confused, and homesick. I might share it if you ask nicely.
The rules when you are 18 are the same rules as when you are 34: Find your dream. Make a fucking plan. Make it fucking work. Or in the succinct words of my great friend Jason Kende: “Train yourself to be your own hero.” I’ve lost that ability recently. Several important relationships in my life severed/disintegrated/are changing and I found myself anchorless. I had to question the things I don’t know. I look back to the achievements of yonder year, the travels, the conversations, the 70 hour work weeks, and I wonder where exactly have they left me. The truth is: none of what I’ve accomplished is of any value. It is minuscule and I’m not being self deprecating. But to me, the fact that I’ve proved, TO MYSELF, that I am competent, shows I can do it again.
Which is making this second round harder.
This explains why I’ve always liked the guys who’ve started their 2nd business. Or gone on their 2nd meditation retreat. Doing the same thing for the 2nd time can be much harder, because you know how much work it took to achieve it, the first time round.I wish I could recapture who I was, before the clutter of experience and noise and iPhones buried my feelings for facts.
In the end, I did write all those dreams down. This time, I actually found a new dream. Several in fact, that have nothing to do with movement or dance or workplace wellness.
Mama, don’t laugh. I want to draw a comic book.
And make my movement coaching notes in the form of comics for my students. I sort of do them already, with stick figures and little arrows and circles, BUT I have yet to actually learn how to tell a story and set of directions with my drawings.
How cool would that be? To get a book of notes for yourself in the form of a comic? To get personal hand drawn comics instead of a letter?
#COMICSROCK #DrawingistheNewInstagram #NoInstagramAccountAnyway #PickUpPencilsNotGuns
Visual learning is easier than reading this blogpost and trying to understand me. It takes you a lot less energy to capture information and knowledge from an image vs a set of written instructions you still need to decipher. Also, language is a relatively costly brain activity; not that it’s wasteful or bad for you, but hey a picture tells a 10000 words in a milisecond. The words I use may not describe what you think they do and they can so hurt and not make sense..we should go back to bleating like sheep!
My words are not your words. But if I can paint a picture for you, we are more than likely to arrive at the same page.
If I could draw all the hurt, all the regret, all the frustration, and all the longing on this page right now, you would catch a glimpse of my heart. And the strings it desperately wants to get attached to. And if you look closely, the melting superglue it took to keep some shatters in place. I’m not able to fill this hole. No amount of caffeine, ice cream, Gilmore Girls, Marcel Proust, running, old photos, Cinema of Cruelty, old diaries, playlists, can keep me from breaking down. And wishing I knew what I was doing. And where I was going.
The storm of emotions and bad decisions and hormonal misdirections has not passed..for 20 odd years now. Lucky for me, I’m using this new dream to clean my compass a little. I’ll probably still be crying for the things I can’t fix (and have shoved down my stomach) at 71. At least, for now, I have a fixed direction (much thanks to million conversations about career and love and NYC I had this past 3 weeks) and multiple ways to get there.
Do you see this space I’m in? It’s a rose petal I’m sitting under. There are towering ivies in the corner. Peeping sunflowers line up to greet me, stepping over the overgrown nettles and weeds. The sun sets the sky on fire, chiding her for forgetting the moon in her haste to go for a swim. I will dig a hole with the badger tonight and seek solace from the heat, the cold, the dry, and the chill. I will burrow down, build a nest, and find the stars in my dreams. And wake up to a thunderstorm, and taste the fresh, sinless air after.
Bottom line: Make it work. Find those dreams, hold them tight, buy a loaf of bread in case you get lost and need to find your own way home. Or if you get hungry again.
I wrote this during a diet of tears, coffee, and no sleep. But I remember my manners (hey Will !!!)
My gratitude and Thank Yous for helping my mindrambles.
Jason Kende for the incredible conversation and metaphors. Ryan Kulp for late night food and conversation binges also. Steve Dean for really difficult I-Don’t-Want-To-Hear-It relationship advice. Chris Roth, whom I love to the ends of the artificially square world we live in. Ferran Moreno who has been there for me through some really selfish moments. Joe Gonzalez whose outlook on life changed me in more ways than one. My twin Joe who listens and listens. My favorite Malaysian, Aizat who just cares way too much. Kate Gazzaniga who should write more and visit me in NYC. Ben Weston who sticks his neck out on a whim and somehow wins racehorses. Nathanial Koloc for making me do ugly things, like write. Lorelei Gilmore for reminding me that..coffee. What a godsend.
