Raspberries in my email
You know, I’d never even think of writing a post like this one by Kase Wickman for Vanity Fair. It’s kind of marvelous, but it took me awhile to get there.
First of all, I don’t frequent social media enough to catch jewels worth commenting on. Nor do I have the social brain. But more than that, I don’t follow celebrities — maybe I should?
But if I did, it seems I’d be more engaged in their lives than in mine. You know what I mean? I don’t deep dive my own social media posts, or even conversations. I used to, but I found it made my life circular, like water always eddying around something instead of just moving on.
So maybe it’s a circulation issue?
Or maaaaybeeee I should consider adopting some new interests. This is a post in fracking Vanity Fair, after all. I wouldn’t mind those bylines, those checks, that writing strata.
The problem with adopting a new interest someone else has demonstrated is that I struggle to really make it mine. It’s more that I try to adopt aspects of another person’s life in the hopes that my life will take note and shape up as a result.
Am I saying that I wish I found celebrity gossip interesting? Maybe.
Kind of like I wish I liked dogs and kids enough to commit to business models involving them. But I don’t. My siblings do, so I’m clear on what that looks like. Not me.
In fact, I’ve rarely had a job where I felt I was actually contributing and enjoying it enough to forget about those other wanna-dos on my list. When I had a partner I also had a honey-do list. It was distracting, too, and not really appreciated by you-know-who.
No, there’s just always been an endless list of things I really wanted to be doing but for some reason couldn’t. Like traveling the world — not safe, not financially prudent, blah blah blah. Or write a book — talk about torture. Perform — what, reveal myself, you’re nuts.
I call it a well-established addiction of mind — an auto-pilot defense system guarding me from the expansive, exploratory nature of my spirit, and designed to steer me into the safety of inaction.
It’s more like living in parentheses. Where the asides are longer than the body copy. Thing is, the traveling through the asides became so real, so persistent over time that the pattern took root like raspberries, “a sprawling thorny plant that can take over a yard with a promise of sweetness but really mostly thorns.”
Which is actually a pretty good description of my mind, which does like to wander — and wonder.
Thing is, when I press ‘go’ on chasing yet another fantasy life, yes, there’s some flurry for awhile. But underneath, there’s a part of me that’s still just waiting around, ostensibly for the more-real or more-safer things I’d rather do, which is really just chugging down the service tracks with no actual destination or changing the wallpaper on the walls of the same room so it feels a little different.
If I’m honest, probably the best times of my life have been when I caught something I wanted that, once received, couldn’t be easily returned. A spouse, a house, a child, lucrative employment, advocates — some even wonderful. I had to sustain the commitment, damn the other favorite-things torpedos.
As much as they were privileges, blessings and even at times great fun, they were all also hard things, full of moments I would not have chosen and couldn’t escape. Liiiike, being left holding the keys to a bankrupt business. Or learning how to insert a naso-gastric feeding tube up my infant daughter’s nose over and over again. Or waking up one afternoon in my beautiful home office, realizing I had a drinking problem.
But here, at this time in my life and in this time-limited article, I’m realizing it’s about exploration. What’s the value when I identify most topics and activities having anything to do with an opinion especially about a specific something or someone occur to me as off-base, untouchable, better left alone?
I don’t really expect an answer. Not even looking for one; I’ve already gotten the gift of this inquiry.
The invisible rules that I at times allow to limit how I live are visible. Now, in this moment, I have a true choice in how or if I communicate, share, join in at the public opinion trough. Maybe that’s not such a big deal, participating in the pubic opinion trough. It’s cacophonous. Fickle. Temporary. Well, everything’s temporary …
See. I can talk my way out of saying anything, ever. It’s just not important enough, as if anyone’s measuring … oh right! They are, and basically people will probably laugh or chastise me about it.
Which brings me back to wow, I’m so grateful I caught up on my email this a.m. Look what happened … I found a raspberry.
