I started to beat myself up about not writing yesterday… only day three and already slacking, but it was a crazy day full of a great deal of stress and some terrible news. The Hardly Strictly Bluegrass concert is over and all the friends I enjoyed for a weekend and myself are going back to our “normal” lives but for me my life has never really been that normal.
As a consultant in the wine industry and ironically a writer about wine (which by the way is much easier than writing about yourself or feelings) I made my own schedule. I have had very few really regimented jobs over the course of my life. Even as the Estate Ambassador for Rubicon Estate for a few years I mainly planned my own travel and worked out of my home. Hell come to think of it my very first job out of college at Windows on the World although my hours were scheduled I worked alone. So basically most of the time I’ve been my own boss.
Sometimes that is good but at times I feel like I need more structure. This whole diatribe is my excuse for not getting my writing done. It would be good if I planned a time to write and ate meals at normal times, had a set bedtime, but honestly that’s never really been “me”.
So today I guess I’ll write twice. And here’s where I may lose some readers because I can’t promise it’s going to always be interesting… but I heard at a songwriting conference once that sometimes it’s important to write to make way for the real story, to remove the clutter so you can see the important things. To get into it as a habit.
I fear it though because I’ve done such a great job at hiding those things. Stuffing the painful things way down. When you sweep up and clean you see the cracks and the shipping paint. You uncover those places where maybe you punched a wall or damaged the coffee table with a glass of wine. But I’ve committed to going there I guess.
Yesterday I found out that my mother is sick, pretty sick I think. This is terribly scary and it conjures up lots of memories of my father being ill. It puts me in a place of extreme uncertainty. It reminds me that little things are less important. That you only have today. I am still on route to Nantucket and back to my new job as interim gift store manager at the whaling museum, and I’m going to take it day by day. I’m thankful for my family that is closer and taking one for the team and I hope to relieve them as needed, but we still don’t have much news. So for today there’s not much I can do but be hopeful and grateful to have today.
Scallop season has started on Nantucket, so I’m hopeful I can get into the water and harvest some scallops. My cousin wrote recently of the book of faces (lol) that when she is fishing nothing else matters, time goes away and it’s a meditative practice. I’m really hoping I can do that tomorrow, getting in the water with my viewing box is so peaceful. I’m with nature and the sound of the water soothes me even when it’s rough. Looking through the viewing box I see the bottom of the sand and all sorts of creatures as they go about their lives knowing little about what is up above the surface. Maybe they’re similar to us, now and then getting a glimpse of something up above or getting swept ashore and then swept back into their mundane normal lives underwater.
My walk, the Camino de Santiago de Compostela felt a little like that. A few weeks steeped in a world that was completely not normal, not sane with a bunch of folks who were all on the same page. Leaving real life for a time to seek, well what I was seeking is still somewhat of a mystery.
The challenge becomes finding that peace of the journey in the day to day. Incorporating those lessons without getting swept back into the mundane. Remembering the magic that I experienced. Sitting here in a bus in the early morning darkness after a red eye with worries on my mind I struggle to find that peace. I do feel a little bit closer to it though and calmer. I pray that I may continue to seek and find serenity even if times are tough.
In other news SFO has decided to prep people for their inflight experience with seats positioned to have less legroom than the actual plane.
But they do have a super cool room for doggies to do their business.
And finally my etiquette tip of the day… “Sir it’s highly offensive for you to floss on the plane.”
RebeccaChapa.com 