Sandbagging: Planning for the Worst & Missing the Best

When I was working at a sales job in Bellevue, my manager asked me if I had any floss.

“Why did you ask me?”

“You seem like the kind of person who’s prepared for anything.”

I pulled a travel-sized floss out of my purse and handed it over.

In college, one of my friends gave me what she called a “shack it brush,” a toothbrush I could carry in my purse in case I ended up “shacking up” with someone. She didn’t need to, though: I already carried a travel toothbrush with me, not for shacking up, but simply in case I ate or drank something and felt a need to brush my teeth afterward.

Here in Boquete, where I am usually without a car and dependent on taxis, rides and buses to get me to and from home, I carry snacks with me to ensure that if I get hungry I have a choice of something healthy to eat.

Maybe floss, travel toothbrushes and a bag of almonds are all a good idea in the long run, but they’re just the tip of the iceberg as far as my preparation is concerned. I recently started to realize how often I do this with everything: how often I am anticipating the worst and spending all my mental energy trying to plan for that eventuality instead of letting myself live in the moment.

I call it sandbagging because sandbags are heavy. They take energy to move around and set up. They require thought and planning to put into place, and they are supposed to help keep out the floods, the natural disasters and inclement weather.

They also only work if they’re placed at the right place at the right time.

It’s definitely ok to have a contingency plan; an escape plan or an understanding that things may go wrong. However, I have found that I’ve been sandbagging so many parts of my life – planning for so many disasters – that I am so caught up in future could-possibly-kill-me-moments that I forget to look up and see that there’s no flood, actually, just sunshine and chirping birds. I call it sandbagging because of the energy it takes, and yet it’s ridiculous to spend all my precious energy planning for a future that may not come; to take all my valuable resources and put them toward protecting myself from an unlikely torrential downpour.

When I sandbag, I don’t just pick the most likely place where the water will come through. I sandbag the whole fucking house, because if I’m already expending the effort, I may as well work a little harder and make sure the whole structure is a fortress. Oops, I forgot to leave an entrance for supplies, and for me to get in and out. Oh well. For now it’s safe in here. I’ll just hunker down and wait for the flood that will never come.

I spend a lot of time and effort anticipating an attack of one kind or another, so I prepare myself for the worst. I expect people to want all my time and attention, so I automatically limit how much of myself I give to ensure they can’t take it all, regardless of who they are or whether they’ve shown themselves to be psychic vampires. I expect I will eventually run out of money instead of trusting in my own ability to make it (despite years of proof otherwise) so I hoard what I can while I can and beat myself up when I can’t. I expect one day the bottom will fall out of the work I have done, so I live in constant fear that it will be taken away. I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop, invisible audience, and it means that every good moment looks like it has a shadow.

There are going to be terrible moments. There are going to be unexpected tragedies; unexpected expenses; unexpected emotional turmoil. However, what if instead of sandbagging, I simply let myself remember that I have the resources and the capabilities to handle any problems that come my way, and instead of spending all my time building defenses, I simply let myself enjoy the good that came my way?

Well, my life would be much better, wouldn’t it? I’d be less stressed out. I’d have a lot more mental energy; I’d be a lot less wary. If, instead of hiding behind my sandbagged defenses, I stepped out into the world, what would I find? Probably a lot more wonder; a lot more love and a lot more space.

They talk about how worry doesn’t actually help anything. Anticipation of potential problems and outcomes is helpful in planning, but actually worrying about something makes not one damn bit of difference to its outcome. It’s easier said than done, but I want to let go of the worry: the parts that make me feel like there’s nothing I can do but spin the worst scenario out in my head over and over again; that imagining how it won’t work is somehow useful.

More than anything, I want to be able to put down the idea that I failed if I was unable to see the outcome of a situation before it happened. I want to be able to not just forgive myself for not seeing a potential failure, but dismissing the idea that that was ever my job. If I had known that ultimately I would end up with a bunch of cookbooks in a storage unit that hadn’t sold, would I have done anything differently? Damn straight I would have, but I had no way of knowing that the books that had been selling so well would stop selling. I had no way of knowing I would run out of steam; that other things would take precedence in my list of priorities; that one day I would realize that I had to choose between my own happiness and future and those damn books.

I couldn’t have known. I have no reason to keep beating myself up for not knowing that. I have no reason to beat myself up for not knowing relationships were going to end before they started; for not knowing that the longer I stayed away from the States the less I would want to go back; for not knowing a year ago that one year away would really only be enough to scratch the surface of the new path my life is taking.

The sandbagging hasn’t worked. Not only did I build dykes in the wrong places, I beat myself up for not realizing where the weaknesses were, without knowing what they would be. I have beat myself up for not knowing what I didn’t know, instead of having the experience, learning from it, accepting what I’d learned and moving forward with that new knowledge. I tend to beat myself up a lot, invisible audience, but now is the time to stop.

I can’t know what I don’t know, and spending my whole life trying to anticipate every last possible outcome not only takes the fun out of it, but it also negates all the lessons I need to learn along the way. Now that I know, I treat my business interactions a lot differently. I divide the money I make into different categories: living expenses, savings, paying off debts, and business expenses. I never would have learned to do that if I hadn’t done it differently when I was selling my cookbooks. I never would have learned what doing what I loved felt like if I’d never done what I hated for money instead. I never would have known what happiness was without experiencing real sadness.

When I sandbagged, I not only wasn’t letting in the flood, I was also holding back the sunshine. It's time to step out of the fortress and know that there's a lot more to anticipate than just a flood.

Love and sandbag free kisses

Morgan

Moving Forward Despite the Fear

I closed the door with the smile still on my face, but it dropped off with a big sigh as soon as I was no longer visible.

It is one of the somewhat fascinating parts of being human: the ability to experience more than one emotion at the same time. A stranger just drove away in my car, a well-taken-care-of 2002 Subaru Outback that was my pride and joy. I watched it leave from inside the slatted blinds with a mixture of excitement and stomach-roiling fear.

The stack of cash on the table looks so small compared to the car, and yet it presents an opportunity: it presents a long time in a foreign country if I live frugally: it is my escape hatch.

For months, I have been agonizing over the steps to take to get to where my heart has yearned to go. It was doubly difficult because the place was not a specific destination, but an idea: somewhere quiet, inspirational, and cheap.

I say that I’m going to write a book. Somehow I think this gives me a certain amount of credence; that I seem less like a flake if I have a goal in mind. It is true that I want to write a book, but it is also true that the real reason I am going is because I have found it impossible lately to hear myself think.

For months, I have tried to work up the courage to explain over and over again why I am leaving. For months, I have thought about how I will be received by many of my well-meaning friends that love me, yet either don’t know the magic words I need to hear, or can’t come up with them because of the emotions a move like this inspires in their own systems. I cannot know what anyone else is really thinking, and yet I have spent far too long trying to figure out the way to present myself so that it will be palatable, acceptable, understandable. It is only recently – although not the first time I have had to come to this realization – that I remembered something important a great friend told me once: it is none of my business what other people think of me.

I am not doing this for the shock factor. I don’t want the attention. I am not trying to inspire others. I certainly don’t feel as courageous as I come across. It is hard to admit because it seems so whimsical, illogical and ridiculous, but I am leaving because, despite having no idea what is ahead or where I will ultimately end up because of this decision, I KNOW, beyond logic, deep into my bones, that I am making the right decision. I have never been in a relationship like this, but I would imagine it is how people feel when they realize that the person they are dating is the one they want to spend the rest of their life with: that despite the unknown, the unpredictability and even a small measure of fear, the right decision is to say yes.

Next week I leave for Panama. I go in search of a simpler lifestyle, that can be fed with less paid work and more time to write. I go in search of inspiration I have not been able to find lately, and in search of silence. I am not afraid of the adventure – in fact, I have had more energy since I booked my ticket than in the last six months combined. What I still fear, despite my best efforts, is the look on peoples’ faces when I tell them – the energy it takes to explain myself yet again, to pretend that their doubts about my sanity don’t matter. I fear losing my footing before I even begin, and yet I am stumbling forward, the spent runner not quite at the end of the race. I am almost there, and yet these last few days will definitely be the hardest part. Once I’m on that plane, the phone is turned off and the doors are shut, I know from experience that I will finally be at peace. Not because there has been a mountain of criticism rained down upon me, but because once again I am making a decision that does not fit with the norm; the path I am taking has not yet been broken. 

The fear comes not from my seemingly uncertain future, but from the reflection of others’ fears on my behalf. As soon as I’m on the plane and there is no one to reflect their fear back at me, I will remember my excitement. I will remember my sense of adventure; my ability to fully embrace living outside the box. For now, surviving the box for another week seems like a formidable task all by itself.  

Love and New Adventure Kisses

Morgan

All Parts of Me

 

Tonight I gave a man a hug. I gave it to him because he needed it, but he wasn’t the only one to benefit.

The ashram is many things, but it is not the place to hug. It is a celibate community that does not encourage exclusive relationships of any kind – friendship or romantic relationships. Although it works to encourage introspection and giving people their space, human contact falls to the wayside. A couple days ago I showed my hot sauce stash to another man at the ashram, and he touched my arm in thanks. It jolted me to realize how long it had been since I had been touched like that by a man – not in a sexual way, but a squeeze to show me physically that my generosity was noticed, noted, and appreciated.

I forget where I read it – fact or fiction? – but somewhere, I read that babies can die if they aren’t held, simply from the lack of contact. Even if they don’t physically die, there is certainly an emotional component to this lack of touch. I know it because I feel it now in a way I didn’t before – when someone reaches out to me in love regardless of whether it’s platonic or romantic, my entire being blossoms in response.

It’s unfortunate that this lack of touch is what brought my appreciation for physical affection to my attention, but then again, it’s a very human characteristic to realize how much you miss something once it’s gone. I am still reeling at the thought that I get to hug Kyle Jaynes again because he was found alive after being lost for four days and thought dead after he disappeared on a hike; I ate a hamburger today because I got the chance to eat beef, and I haven’t had the opportunity to do so for awhile, since the ashram serves mostly vegetarian fare.

When I first came to the ashram, I thought it was the first place I had been in a long time where I could be myself, but that’s not true. This is the first place I’ve ever been that I could be THIS self, but that doesn’t mean I’m ALL parts of me here. I have found emotional support here, but not the physical comfort to accompany it; I have found a spiritual path, but it doesn’t leave room for my trucker’s vocabulary or my road rage at tourist drivers (many of whom actually come from British Columbia in their campers and manage to drive in front of me…regardless of where I am!)

Tonight, I feel enlightened, because I can focus on being here, now, without worrying about where I will go next, or what I want to be, when I’m already it…I’m already me. This morning, I didn’t feel enlightened. I will probably lose my enlightenment at some point – like when my alarm clock starts beeping at me tomorrow morning. Someone pointed out to me here that enlightenment comes in small pieces; in mundane tasks and every day moments, where you feel such profound joy to be where you are that all other thoughts are whisked away. In those moments, it doesn’t matter if I’ve reached some far off space that I hope to hold for the rest of my life; it doesn’t matter if I have everything I need or want to live the life I want and deserve. All that matters is that at that moment, I connect in a way that is tangible…as if I put my finger on a thread of the universe and can feel the vibrations resonate through me, as if I were the guitar body, and someone else is twanging the strings. 

Love and sometimes enlightened kisses

Morgan

The Steve Jobs Garage Phase

It’s not for everyone. Many people are incapable of having a point like this in their life, simply because they have obligations that do not allow it. For many others, such a phase is unnecessary: the life they want and have imagined is accessible to them without growing pains, an uncharted outcome, fear or doubt. Some of us, however, are not so lucky: we are the chosen few that cannot seem to take the easy way in.

Yes, it’s true: I make my life harder than it needs to be. I feel a need to find a path that has not been tread before; that is barely visible through the underbrush; that many can’t see at all, and that even those with a decent weedwacker would avoid. Yes, it’s true: I want to be Steve Jobs, and develop a fantastic idea in my garage.

Okay, maybe I won’t be able to invent the next big technological breakthrough. Maybe I’m just fooling myself that my ideas, my drive and my dream will get me anywhere at all. Maybe I’m not the next Steve Jobs, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have a right to the Steve Jobs Garage Phase.

The SJG Phase is where you’re hunkered down with your project. To passerby and people listening at the garage door, it may not seem like there’s much going on. They may not realize that you’re asleep at 10 a.m. because you were up until 4 a.m. agonizing about the next step; that you’re working weekends and strange hours with little to no pay to try and coax your little dream to life. They don’t realize that your dream is finicky and you haven’t figured out what to feed it yet; they may not know that at the slightest upset, it will retreat into its shell, never to be heard from again.

The most dangerous part of the SJG Phase is the mailman; the friend, the family member. They knock on the garage door, hear nothing, and enter. They see nothing they understand, shake their heads and proclaim that you are not making headway. The tiny dream is hiding from them, so they cannot see its glimmer of intelligence or potential for growth. All they see is you, in the middle of your garage, surrounded by pizza boxes, insisting loudly that you have not lost your mind, that they would understand if only they could see.

This well-meaning person cannot understand, but they try to make you understand that there’s an easier way out. You don’t have to live in the garage, they say. Come out into the light.

At this point, you have a choice. You can turn your back forever on that tiny idea and let it die alone in the garage, or you turn your back on your well-meaning friend and let them think you’re crazy. It’s not an easy choice; some have waffled back and forth, running back to the garage to search for the tiny dying idea, others burying the memory deep because it hurts too much to think about it in the light of day.

If you choose to remain in the garage, you shrug your shoulders, wish your well-meaning friend a good day, and close the garage door behind them. It may not be the most hospitable of places, but the garage is nevertheless home to your idea. For what it’s worth, you’re going to feed that idea and watch it grow into whatever the heck it wants to. When its limbs are strong enough and its little heart beats furiously at its own accord, you will follow it out of the garage, and into the light. 

Love and dingy garage kisses,

Morgan

A Dangerous Four-Letter Word: Fear

Last week I did something I have been meaning to do for quite awhile. It’s nothing major, and probably not life-changing, but for some reason it was something I could never bring myself to get around to doing: I created a food blog. It’s called Savoring Life, and it’s related to my book Savoring Chelan and the book I’m currently compiling, Savoring Leavenworth (I’m savoring things, get it?)
For anyone who has never set up a blog, there really isn’t much to it: you find a blog host (Blogger, WordPress, etc.), fiddle around with the design until it looks how you want it to, and write something on it. Seems easy, right? For a writer like me, who writes a lot and already has a weekly blog, it really shouldn’t have been that big of a deal, but it was.
Part of the reason that I dragged my feet on this is because it’s a commitment. If you’re going to have a blog and get any sort of regular audience, you have to post on a regular basis. Not only that, but you have to be able to blog about interesting things to keep your audience. (This is where I would like to give a shout out to my friend Molly Steere, who just celebrated her blog’s first birthday and just passed 10,000 hits – way to go Molly!)
The truth is, there’s something about committing to do something regularly that has made me want to drag my feet. What is that something? It’s fear, plain and simple.
It’s such a small word, fear. It doesn’t leap off the page at most people, and it rarely incites the kind of response that other words do: massacre, genocide, food poisoning, Rapture. Fear isn’t even a normal four-letter word that you should teach your kids never to use. Some words, though, are sneaky like that. You think about the word fear and it doesn’t motivate or scare you the way “plague” or “empty cookie jar” might, but it is still an incredibly dangerous word.
How many things have I failed to do because of fear? Countless things. There’s no way to keep track of how many times I didn’t do something without even being able to admit that fear was the reason I didn’t do it. I like to think I’m not the only one that rationalizes my way out of facing my fears. Mountain biking? I could break a leg, or fly over my handlebars. Going to Mexico? There are drug cartels there. Talking to that cute guy at the bar? He probably has a girlfriend already. Asking for help? It’s easier just to do it myself than to be shut down.
The worst part about fear is not what you actually fear, however. It’s the totally unstudied and illogical idea you have of what will happen if your fears come true. What’s the worst possible thing that could happen to me regarding my food blog? That someone finds it highly offensive – “Fried plantains? You HARLOT!” – and tells everyone to shun me forever. See? When you admit your worst fears out in the open, they seem silly and illogical. The trick, then, is to admit what your worst fears are, maybe just to yourself to start with, then deciding that the realization of that fear is not worth hanging back for.
I was scared to start a food blog because of what it could mean: yet another thing I would be required to write on a regular basis. But wait a minute, I’m a writer…what I WANT in life is something more to write about, something I care a lot about and want to share with others. What do I care about, think about and do nearly every day? I care about, think about, and write about food. Why shouldn’t I share that with you, invisible audience? If I leave out the fear factor, there’s no good reason left.

Love and fearless kisses
Morgan