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

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

Leap, and The Net Will Appear

There was little else I could do. I had a book to finish, and its end was inevitable. I was not forced by anyone but myself, but I had to come back just the same – perhaps I had to come back even more because I was the only one making me.
So I did. I left Mexico and leaped back into my life in Washington. I have seen friends and family, gone to funerals and concerts, and fought in vain against trying to spend money. Because, you see, it’s hard to make money when you’re working 12+ hours a day trying to publish a book with the thought that you will be paid in the future for all your hard work.

I’m glad I came back, but there was a point a couple days ago when I bent double with the momentousness of what I had just done. On that morning, I took one final look at my book’s proof and pressed a button to send an email asking who in town wanted to carry it. I nearly threw up when the confirmation came back that it had sent. What was I thinking??? Despite the fact that I keep coming back to Chelan, I try to keep a low profile while I’m in town, but that was immediately blown out of the water. I was going to have to go around asking who wanted to sell my book, asking people who have known me – or my family at least – for a long time. There went anonymity.

I can’t quit this job. I can’t leave this business, because I am this business. Certainly I can escape, but it’s not like someone will take me out to lunch, lament the fact that I’m leaving, then hire someone to take my place.

I have been fighting a panic since I hit SEND. It is the kind of panic that comes from knowing that you have just stepped firmly on the right path, your path, and there is no going back. It is the panic of someone who has always had a way out, who has always been good at follow through but not long-term commitment, and I am afraid, utterly afraid, that I will fail.

It has all led me to this: the jobs in retail, graphic design, my journalism degree, my travels, my Spanish, my sales experience. I know what I’m doing, and anything I don't know I can learn. I know the steps I need to take to succeed. I have started taking them. Now I stand on another ledge, however. It’s the ledge where I commit to all the things I need to do to sell my book and sell it correctly. It is where I decide that I will not be wishy-washy about my writing, and use this book to launch a name for myself. This is the point where I decide that I can actually do what I set out to do when I left my job in Bellevue almost 2 years ago. This is the point where I have to start acting like I belong here, and that will take courage; courage I still have yet to muster up. As I said, I am at least aware of the steps I need to take to get me there, and the first steps have already been taken. Now, however, I’m staring at empty space and I have to have faith that the step is there and sturdy and can hold me, whether I can see it or not. I have to have faith in myself, and despite all my talk, many times that is the hardest thing for me to find.

I have learned recently, however, that you have to start acting like the change has taken place before it actually does: you have to act like you’re going to make it before you will. So here’s to the actions that speak louder than words, and to the Zen saying, “Leap, and the net will appear.”

Love and leaping kisses
Morgan

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