Fire It Up

I’m feeling contemplative today, which is normal during fall–as the season turns green to red-gold, I always look back to where I was.

It’s been a hellacious ride. I’ve done a complete 180 on more than one stance, stand, belief, habit, perception, you name it. Some of the changes are health related– about thirteen years ago, I quit smoking; hard for me to believe, looking back, that I ever had a two pack a day habit. I hardly ever drink anymore, and almost never more than one. Stuff like that.

Mostly there are a lot of perception and behavioral changes. Could be from my Reiki training. Could be from therapy. Maybe all the professionals I’ve been hanging out with have influenced me; my husband, for one, has been an incredible teacher–he doesn’t bring ego into a job; he just gets the damn thing done and reaches for the next one on the stack. Might just be growing up. Whatever the cause, I’ve become so different  from the me of even five years ago that it’s a little scary sometimes.

I routinely hang out with people I would have been terrified to be seen with ten years ago, because I was so worried about being a good, responsible stepmom/ grandmother/ massage therapist/ reiki master/ wife/ whateverwhateverwhatever.

I listen a lot more than I argue, and when I argue I’m much more respectful of the fact that there are multiple sides to any situation, no matter how passionate the person may be in their righteous indignation.

I’m a lot more careful what I say online. If it’s not something I’d be OK with my publisher/ potential agent/ editing client/ stepdaughter seeing, I try not to post it. Now and again I slip. I’m human. But I try.

Side rant: Folks, please–remember that message boards are public. If an editor goes hunting through a simple google search and comes up with pages of you posting snits over stupid things and generally demonstrating that you will be a huge PITA to work with–you lose. And you can’t ever erase that trail. So please, for the love of Pen, be careful.  (I don’t believe most editors would bother looking for a prospective author’s online trail. But eventually, if/when you do get published, someone will. So state your beliefs, sure; just avoid sounding like a PITA prima donna.)

*ahem* Back on topic: changes. I used to stress if someone didn’t call me back within an hour or if a friend was more than half an hour late; now I hardly notice if someone doesn’t answer an email for 3 weeks or 5 months or a year, and I build in an hour’s grace around people who I know have a tendency to run late. And if I’m busy, I have no compunction about sending a call to voice mail. I return calls when I have time to put my full attention to the call, which may take some time. I make no apologies for this. In fact, I don’t apologize nearly as often as I used to, and I’m working on cutting even that down further.

The most important change is probably that I trust my intuition a lot more than I ever have before in my life. I trust my own judgement. I have found that when a major change is coming, I will sense it in advance–I won’t know what the change is, but I always feel life, the universe, and everything tugging into a new direction. I can name dozens of instances where I trusted myself and avoided a problem I didn’t even know was there until after I stepped around it. I can name as many where I argued myself out of my intuition and jumped straight into the bear trap.

I’ve ditched a lot of distractions. A lot. I used to stay up till all hours, days on end, playing the long, involved PC RPG games. I could waste days on Sonic the Hedgehog, Neverwinter Nights, even Zork, god help me. I watched hours and hours of TV. I cooked elaborate meals and went nuts trying to create a Good Home for myself and my husband. I wanted a garden that could provide the bulk of our meals! Landscaping! Neatly groomed dogs that are walked every day! New carpet! Artistically painted walls!

…. yeah. That’s all gone, or at least on the shelf. We ditched the cable last month and I haven’t missed it a bit. The garden is a giant shaggy overlapping carpet of marjoram, rosemary, oregano, parsley, daylillies, fall mums, fennel, thyme, and various butterfly and hummingbird attracting flowers, and I adore it. I’ve removed 95% of the games from all of my computers (scientific estimate there). Etc.

I stay up till all hours, days on end, writing. Blog posts, book reviews, short stories, novels, editing other people’s work. I feel like a fire has been lit up inside of me, and it’s driving me to pour all that formerly wasted energy into a tight, focused funnel of creating new things, all the time. I like being around other people who are lit up like this, who have made the choice to step away from the tedium of the daily noise and make their own song. Whether they cook or write or carve wood or publish, doesn’t matter what the medium of choice: that spark is contagious and marvelous.

Watch. Here–take this torch. Ready? All right, then, it’s lit–so start running–now!