A Radio Show, Stubborn Convictions, Blue Moons & Courage

This coming Wednesday, I’ll be joining Karen Monroy, Marcia Reynolds, and our host Ana Lewis for another broadcast of “Living the Dream” on Blogtalk radio. (If you’d like to hear the first show, you can download it here. The download version includes an interesting 15 minute exchange that wasn’t heard on-air).

Ana sent me an email this week asking me to come up with a single word that indicates what my focus will be for the rest of the year. So far, all the words that have come to mind feel incomplete. It’s likely because I rarely think in terms of months or years anymore, but in days.

The first word I thought of was drive, which is kind of funny because I won’t have a car when this journey ends in 23 days, and the alternate meaning – as in driving ambition – doesn’t resonate with me at all. I’m not ambitious in the typical sense of the word. I don’t aspire to pots of gold but to a sense of peace, mostly within myself, but also in my environment and with other people. In many ways, I think I’ve floated between Maslow’s first three tiers in the hierarchy of human needs, without ever knowing any of them to be stable, or something that could easily be taken away by a slight change in circumstance or by the actions of other people. My pyramid doesn’t place as high of a value on self-actualization as it does on simple peace. I believe that peace, even more than food, is essential to my spirit.

To drive, though, also means to be in control. In the process of writing lately, I’ve had to revisit how much advice I’ve taken over the years, how many messages I’ve let sink in, and how many words I believed that later turned out to be untrue. There are people who believe that I am stubborn and full of strong convictions, and maybe that’s part of me, (and certainly some convictions have grown stronger with experience), but there’s a bigger other part of me that’s remained perpetually naive, often to my own detriment. The Counting Crows have a song called Mr. Jones and Me, with the lyric “Believe in me, help me believe in anything, I want to be someone who believes”.  There’s no one line that sums up 48 years of my emotional life better. I’ve wanted so badly to believe in some things at times that I suspended disbelief, and hung all my hopes on the fantastical, elusive power of imagination and once-in-a-blue-moon miracles.

Maybe I have to learn to be as good of an emotional driver as a I am a driver of automobiles. Be on the defensive more, slow down, look both ways and then once more, proceed with caution, be more aware of what other people are doing on the road.

Speaking of driving, I sometimes wish my thoughts would yield to a Stop sign. I analyze too much. I think too much. Everything in me that loves simplicity fights against this kind of laborious, painstaking search for rationality, and there’s a huge part of me that envies those who, by nature or habit, can really let things roll off their back. I am a sponge that sometimes envies the bricks. Sometimes I wish I were a brick. I wish I could be hard like that, and weather all the storms without letting them fill me up.

The word disconnect also comes to mind. I’ll be returning my internet equipment and spare Blackberry to Verizon soon, and I’ll be giving up my primary cell phone in August in order to spare myself any extra expenses while I’m writing my book. I won’t be blogging, and I will be disconnected, at least for a time, from my online friends and acquaintances. Hopefully, when the book is done, they’ll still be interested in reading it, but I know there are no guarantees. The important thing is to finish first, worry later.

I don’t know what word I’ll come up with for the radio show. I’m kind of in a funk right now, not because it’s not time to end the road trip but because, along with the good experiences I’ve had, I’m grappling with a few harsh lessons I’ve (re)learned in the past few months, and I’m not sure they are lessons worth imparting. I don’t know if the full story in my heart will find it’s way to paper. I’m scared that I’m not up to that kind of bruising, delicate challenge. And I’m afraid because I’m going into the world again every bit as naked as I was at sixteen. I’m not afraid to be naked. I’m only fearful, (often), of everything else. I’m also brave, I know, and full of stubborn conviction, including the (maybe naive) belief that I can write a book worth reading.

I’m packing now and getting ready to hit the road again tomorrow. I’ll be visiting New Mexico again as one of my last destinations. It will take me a few days to get there. Maybe in the meantime I’ll come up with a word. And a way to steel my courage.