Where do we go from here?

Late last summer and fall, I watched The X-Factor, one of many talent-related reality shows on television. One of the performers really stood out for me when he sang his own composition, "Where Do We Go From Here." He was a sweet kid with a great voice and the song was poignant without being sappy.

Tonight, I was thinking back on the show and the kid (Chris Rene - check him out) and the chorus of the song has been the background music to all this evenings' musings and meanderings.  Where exactly do we go from here? As a retail worker, it sometimes feels like all I hear, see, and talk about every day is prices. Groceries are through the roof. Gas is through the roof. Wall Street is up, and then it's down. The world is shaky.

Last time I checked in, I wrote about how great it has been to play music at The Cottage. At that point, I didn't really know what was going to happen next musically. I had gotten to where I felt very safe, and now I'm back to facing my personal thorn: I get horrible stage fright. I was starting to feel like I was gaining control; now, the last few months I've barely sung.

Until the last week or so, that is. Now, I'm feeling energized. I'm getting more exercise. I'm reading and doing some writing, working on a couple of stories I started a year or so back. I'm picking up my guitar and playing around with new melodies and searching out lyrics to go with them. Songwriting, my passion, is reignited. I bought a Spanish language program and started working on yet another lifetime dream - being able to speak more than one language.

I'm finding that change is good, and, praise God, it isn't scaring me like it used to. Oh, I still get scared - just not overly so. Whatever the future holds, I intend to live my life to the fullest, and hopefully that will include being creative. These are truly random thoughts. I'm feeling totally happy tonight and I'm grateful. I feel very blessed.

You - if you're reading this, I want you to know that you are a blessing in my life, too.

When all is said and done, I sincerely hope my life will have proven useful to God and that my presence will have blessed others.

Endings...

I hate endings.

For the last two years, I have been totally blessed to be able to share my music (and my renditions of others' music) at a lovely little bar called The Cottage Inn in Kila, MT. This little space, with its very loving, welcoming, and encouraging inhabitants, has been where I have cut my musical teeth, so to speak. In the last two years of playing Saturday nights at The Cottage, I have gone from a scared, meek, barely-able-to-look-up singer to a confident performer.

I thank you, Keith and Cathryn Bassett, for being who you are are. I thank your whole family, especially Sam, for your hugs. I have relished every moment with you and hope that this particular ending is not the end of being together. I know that other venues of play will open their doors to me. I won't stop learning or creating. But my heart is heavy; I'm sad tonight to think that those wonderful evenings, with warm fire burning, smiling faces, sharing weird poetry and even stranger musings have come to an end.

Bless you, my dear ones. You are my Muse. May life shower you with only good things...new adventures, new stories, new friends, new opportunities...

As I continue forward, I will carry those evenings of love and acceptance with me.

Some endings (or most, I suspect) are really beginnings. My lovely daughter has flown the coop, traveling to Washington State to complete her student teaching. I fear that she may never come back, may never live so close again. So many opportunities to get together, now gone.

I'm not feeling particularly eloquent tonight...just reflecting on life and change and how we manage to soldier on, seeking those greener pastures.

Lord, keep me ever adaptable, ever learning, and ever optimistic. Thank you for this journey called Life, with all its hills and valleys. The sadness and happiness we get to experience now is only a glimmer of the glory that awaits us in heaven. Thank you for the friends you provide to us, who keep us sane in an insane world, and who give us a taste of unconditional love.

Creativity runs amok...

January 1, 2012

I sometimes wish I had more than one lifetime to live. On days like today, I feel like I have so much I want to do, to say, and to be.

I’ve never understood how to control all the creativity that I feel surging through my body on days like today. I just watched a movie about Temple Grandin, an amazing autistic woman who, despite the odds against her, not only has learned how to exist within  her autism, but who has excelled far beyond what anyone would have imagined for her.

I have had many days like today during my almost-fifty-one years on this earth – days where I just felt full of ideas, but haven’t been able to figure out how to channel all this energy I have inside me. Maybe I have a weird form of autism myself. When the movie was finished, I realized I have more control over what I can do than I’ve ever given myself credit for.

I have always loved music for what it gives me. When I listen to music, I run the gamut of emotions, depending on the type I’m listening to, and I love all sorts of music for the different ways it makes me feel. When I’ve tried to create music, I’ve felt frustrated because I want to create music that makes others feel what I feel. I’ve always felt like I had the potential to make a living doing what I truly love to do, which is to create, but have always felt stymied somehow.

I wonder what I can do today to change that. Can I find a way to use the gifts God has given me? How can I find my way to that place where I can create songs and words and give others pleasure or solace or joy?

I’ve spent my whole life feeling like a failure because I haven’t found a way to channel these energies. A few years ago, I was diagnosed with the mental illness known as Bipolar II. The doctor put me on Prozac and it’s literally been a miracle drug for me. For the first time in my life (and I was 42 when I was diagnosed), I was able to distinguish between the things that are truly worth getting upset over, and the things that really, in the broad scheme of things, don’t matter at all. That was a good start. I guess that, like Temple who will always have autism, I need to come to grips with the fact that I will always be the way I am. There’s no “cure.”

When I was diagnosed, I was almost finished with my bachelors degree in education. Until that pivotal moment, I had spend a good amount of my time feeling completely wrong. I was drowning in guilt – I was mad at myself because my constant frustration with myself and my life manifested itself in divorce, in leaving my children before I was done raising them, and in jumping from one thing to another. It’s been such a hard way to live and it’s even more difficult to explain.

Being diagnosed meant that there really was something different about me and that my emotions and ability to think and process really were scattered and that it wasn’t necessarily my fault that I am the way I am. There was something very freeing in that, because I never meant to make big mistakes or to hurt the people I love. I just always seemed to anyway.

On days like today, I am full of creative energy, but I can’t figure out where to start, and that’s what ultimately frustrates me. I feel like I should really be split into two or ten or twenty people if I’m going to accomplish everything I want to in this short life. Here is the short list of things I want to do before I die:

·         I want to learn to speak lots of languages fluently, particularly French and Spanish.

·         I want to learn how to paint beautiful sunsets.

·         I want to become a truly accomplished musician, but have never been able to grasp theory. I need to understand music theory.

·         I want to have more energy and time to spend on others.

As I said, this is the short list. The real list goes on and on.

So when I live through a day like today, a lot of the time all I can do is crawl into a hole and listen to music, because it calms me and removes the feeling that I’m failing because I’m not writing a book a day or a song a day or doing anything to learn those languages. I feel time passing me by like a speeding bullet all the time and inside I’m screaming, “SLOW DOWN!”

The rational part of me (and yes, there actually IS a rational part of me, however small it might be) knows that the only way to write a book is to write it, and if it takes a month or a year or five years or more, that’s how it’s got to be. I know that the only way to write a song is to struggle through chord changes, searching for that combination that speaks to my heart, and fighting my way through the trite and mundane words to find the lyrics that express what I’m feeling without being sappy or cliché. The problem is that I have difficulty focusing for long periods of time. I’ll be in the middle of one project and will get an idea for another, and the two ideas war against each other until I give up in frustration, go to my room, and plug in my earphones.

I guess what’s scaring me today is that I am fifty, almost fifty-one, and all I can see are the missed opportunities. Today is the first day of the year 2012. Nostradamus and the Mayans predicted centuries ago that this will be our last year on earth as we know it. Part of me could care less, because I’m a Christian and I believe what the Bible says, what Jesus said, that no one knows the time or day that this earth will come to an end. He said there would be many false prophecies about the end of days before it actually occurs, and that we shouldn’t fear or be overly concerned about it.

Then there’s the totally human part of me that gets really scared that this IS the end, and that I don’t have a damn thing to show for my time on earth. I haven’t cured cancer – hell, I haven’t even been able to lose ten of the nasty 60 pounds I’ve put on in the last 30 years!

Some say that all that really matters is love, the love we have given, and that all we get to take with us is love. Have I loved anybody but myself in this life?

Some time ago, I was told that if you write and there are too many “I” statements, it shows how selfish you are. Case in point: This essay! How many “I”s are already present? I don’t want to be selfish and lazy and fat and greedy. I want to give something back to the world.

I grew up in the “me” generation; I spent my early adulthood in the seventies, when sayings like, “Look out for number one” (read “Care about myself first”) were popular. I spent those early years feeling stupid and ugly and unloved. My own family told me I was hypersensitive because I couldn’t handle emotionally stressful situations at all. So I latched onto the “me” mentality and spent a lot of time daydreaming about becoming rich and famous and making all those naysayers eat their words. I’d make them regret having snubbed me or having been mean to me. I realize now that that viewpoint has had a huge impact on being able to create anything. If you’re always focused on what you can gain yourself from what you create (be it money or fame or prestige or power), then it’s impossible to really bring joy to anyone else.

The great thing about this last year is that when I turned fifty, I suddenly realized that I AM getting older, and with age comes fat and wrinkles and tiredness, and that if I can get through a day without hurting someone or yelling back at an angry customer or coworker or without taking my frustrations out on my husband, then maybe that’s all I can ask of myself. Maybe I need to just be satisfied with that. It sounds stupid, but with that monumental birthday came a new attitude of, “This is me. This is who I am – take it or leave it.” I felt myself relax on many levels.

But the manic part of me remains. The potential for falling into a major depression (of which I’ve had several in my life) still remains. I realize that as long as I live, I will probably never be satisfied with what I’ve accomplished and I’ll always have regrets about what I haven’t. That realization is freeing somehow.

I don’t want it to be an excuse, though. As long as I am still breathing and able to talk and walk and smile, each day is a gift. Each days holds the potential for being one in which I take the time to create…even if it’s just spending time musing, like I am right now.