Reeling

It has been an interesting 24 hours. This time yesterday I was on the phone with The Guru. Once or twice a year he brings me face to face with my shit. The beauty of being friends with someone for nearly 20 years is that they KNOW the ins & outs of your shit. They know when you're running from yourself before you even finish lacing up your shoes. It's the scary beautiful thing about letting folks in--once they know, they always know.

Well, The Guru knows a lot. He, like anyone else who knows me well, knows that this writing thing helps me breathe. When the air gets too thick & I get to choking on real & imagined airborne dis-ease, I need to write. Sometimes all that dis-ease takes me so far from myself that I forget I need to write, just as my atrophied muscles forget that I need to dance. But The Guru is always there, ready to make me see where I'm falling down on the job. It's done lovingly & with jokes because he knows I'm a "big head" & will get too deep into the words themselves. My Mr. Mary Poppins gives it to me with a spoonful of sugar but never goes light on the medicine.

So what'd I learn last night?

He told me I'm a good producer, for everyone else but myself. I do the shit out of my job & then come home too tired to write or plan. Or dance. I take [grad] school very seriously & come home too tired to write or plan. Or dance. My own ideas have been backburnered for eons, making their way to the light every couple of years or so because I'm too busy pushing everyone else's missions--that I don't even believe in.

Why is that? Well, The Guru says it's because I'm an artist with egghead sensibilities. I've learned to go for the sure thing, like the paycheck. But the things that pay me are never the things that sustain me & never leave me real time for sustenance.

& that boils down to fear. I'm a headstrong, bull by the horns chick. But I obviously grab specific bulls with certain kinds of safe-ish horns.
Here I thought I was doing something, throwing caution to the wind, taking a step back from the career path I'd chosen, taking on ridiculous debt & a great deal of uncertainty. Nope. According to him, & very much truth, it was in the arena I most understand--though least respect: education. I love its intention but not its form. I didn't throw caution to the wind & start that program I've been building in my mind & Word files for at least a decade. It's never perfect enough for me to release & drop out there to see if it has a parachute.

Try the thing, he said, and fail it, but don't let it be a failure because I never tried. This in relation to fully accepting that I'm an artist with other aspirations that also must be attempted. Because I'm rarely satisfied & there's always 1 more thing that could or should be done. & he's right. I want to be an African dance Novelist Fitness instructor Proprietor Program director Life coach when I grow up. But here I am meandering down a path that preps me, among other things, to absorb "crackhead stories" & be sick because I'm a sponge & shouldn't take on too much of "that." Real spit.

Here I've gone & gotten a tattoo for my 39th that reads "choice, chance, change" because I DO KNOW that I am in the throws of making choices to take chances to affect change in my life but...my chances ain't big enough. Because, there's
rent & a car note & a LIFE that I want to be able to be still long enough to SEE. There's this future that I'm tryna put down with The Beau & EVERYTHING takes start up capital.

Excuses. Real life happening as excuses that make sense daily, but excuses just the same. So I'm being challenged. Again. & when I don't jump fast enough, The Guru will remind me that I'm NOT wearing cement boots & I CAN take a leap & when I fall, there WILL be arms outstretched to catch me. I have to trust that. Which I do. Except that I don't. Because trust is also an issue.

The short & short of it (no mistake) is that I have work to do. & it's past time for me to decide if my production line is going to crank for me or continue to do it for others. Which 1's of you will reach out should I fall? Which 1's of you got $5 on my ebook? Would put your daughter in my program? Would hire me to help you do the work it's easiest to do with others than with self? No need to answer. Rhetorical questions, but I have to get comfortable with my own answers before later is too late.

Watch me move.