I am not quite certain what the theme of this post is. There is so much that I have going through my head, my life, and my dreams that it may seem a bit jumbled. I promise that if you bear with me for a minute something good will come from this.
(The above picture I took on a sea kayak trip just off the coast of La Paz, Mexico)
"I knew that if I allowed fear to overtake me, my journey was doomed." - Cheryl Strayed "Wild"
There are so many places that I had imagined I would have seen by this point in my life. If you had spoken to me a decade ago as I was graduating from high school I would have informed you that I was basically going to conquer the planet in the next five years.
So far, just getting a Bachelor Degree seems to be a lofty goal.
My move to Portland has proven a few things to me:
1) Moving to a city does not mean that I am not still secluded
2) Going back to school does not actually mean that I will magically like it this time around.
3) There is choice in every thing that we do in this life - EVERYTHING
4) When an opportunity presents itself - do not hesitate
5) Moving backwards to be a person you used to be can be extremely damaging, yet moving forward to be a person that you never wanted to be can be just as harmful.
6) At no point should you pay more than $700 to live in a small hotel room.
7) One must leave ones apartment to experience the world when one is trying to conquer it.
8) I am only ever as secluded as I want myself to be
Lessons I have learned - some more than once now - and find that I do not regret my time here in this city, that quite frankly is just a little baby when it comes to having a personality of its own. Going to school here has been fine. If I could get a BS only taking writing classes, and at no point having to take a Shakespeare or poetry class, than this would go much smoother for me. Basically, I just like my writing classes. But those classes have afforded me with a few things that I find invaluable, not only to my craft, but to life in general.
1) I am fully capable of making this a living - I just am going to have to put my whole being and copious amounts of blood, sweat, and tears into it to do so.
2) Fiction is a bit like playing the game "two lies and a truth" (the brother game to two truths and a lie). There is truth in the stories I can tell. If I do it right, there will be anything from profound truth that my readers will find stays with them after they are finished, to funny/ light-hearted truths that will get a chuckle, a head nod, and maybe even spark an internet meme.
3) There is a point at which knowing a character, and engrossing myself in their life is too much. Self experimentation is not always the best way to deepen the connection.
I recently learned the hard way that my craft has a downside - if I let it. I was in the process of deciding that I was going to take a break from Portland, and feeling a little sorry for myself, and also writing everyday for not only my class but my own personal goal to do so, when I made the decision to do an experiment. In part for research into a story I was writing and in part because, it fed my loneliness and slight depression. I wanted to prove something to myself, even if I was going to be hurt in the end.
The story I was working on at the time involved a woman living alone in the city (sound familiar?) who is witness to a crime and is kidnapped by the perpetrator. She has minimal contact with people, even her family, and knows that she will not be missed. So, of course she must kick ass and save herself, but when she returns she realizes that the entire time she is gone (which is like a month) not one person noticed her absence or worried about her even in the slightest. The rest of the story is about her going into witness protection while trying to build a life of meaning.
My experiment basically involved me not initiating contact with anyone that I consider close to me. These people mainly consisted of immediate family members and my four best friends. These are the people that I would assume would miss me if anyone snatched me off the street. After the first week of silence I was getting a bit ticked-off. What the hell kind of loved ones are these? That is when I went one farther and decided that I would only answer back to any communication if it was a second phone call. That meant that any emails or texts may as well not have happened. I wanted to know how a true absence would affect my relationship with any of these people.
I made it a little over two and a half weeks before my friend, Karin, called me. The worst thing is that she only called me because I am staying with her pretty soon when I go to Utah for an old roommates wedding and she wanted to know the exact dates I was planning on flying in and out. There was no concern for my safety, just wanting to know when she needed to get me.
As you might imagine, this test was a major blow to an already shaky ego. NO ONE would miss me if I disappeared today, until the rent check didn't get sent in and my land lord finally called my next of kin to track me down.
I have become a victim of my own anti-social shyness. Everyone that I know lives in a different state than I do. I have lived here for six months now and, conscience or not, I have made exactly zero friends. I leave my classes with talking to little or no classmates. I chat politely in my church meetings, leave immediately, go to no extra activities, and lets be honest - I can recognize maybe a handful of them in a setting outside of church, and I know maybe a quarter of those people's names. I spend an awful lot of my free time in my apartment. I really only leave to go on my jogs, go to Powell's for author events (which is actually something I am really going to miss because they have really good ones here), or am going to school. Part of it is due to me not being able to find a job here, which means I am living off student loans, which means I have no money.
Mostly though, I made a bad choice. I set myself outside of my immediate community, and set up an outside community that is too far away to be more than an encouraging phone call for a few minutes a day.
And it is all my own fault - my choice.
I am always only as alone as I wish to be.
While this was all going down most of my time was then taken up my reading and writing and entirely too much Netflix. I wanted to escape my life, still do a little, and indulged that with more than a few internet searches on places around the world that I want to go... I want to lose myself in, because losing myself in a foreign country seems so much more legitimate than being lost in Portland, OR. The whole time yearning to go, and knowing that I have exactly zero money to get myself there.
Finally, two things happened. First, I realized that if I want to be connected to others, than I have to do the connecting. I am my own responsibility. The more I was thinking and focusing on how alone I was - the more alone I became. I finally pulled myself out of the rut... well, I AM pulling myself out of the rut. Second, I read a book that has been in my bookshelf for an unknown amount of time. I have no recollection of ever getting this book. I remember meeting the author for a different book she wrote, but not for the one I read.
Cheryl lost her mother in her early 20's and part of her healing from that was to hike the Pacific Crest Trail by herself. The Pacific Crest Trail is a trail that goes from the border of Mexico to the border of Canada (it may go a little inside Canada). This appealed to me because I would love to hike the PCT. It is on my bucket list. Her account of her summer trekking from somewhere just before the High Sierra Mountains to the Columbia River that serves as the border between Washington and Oregon was well written and engaging. I read it in just over three sittings.
I recommend this book to everyone.
The whole time I was reading this I kept asking myself if I could do it. Could I go and backpack across the country by myself? I want to... not sure if I actually could. I would definitely love to do it on with a friend or two.
The best thing about the book came to me on pg# 51 when she says, "I knew that if I allowed fear to overtake me, my journey was doomed."
There are times that I am reading when things are just so poignant to me. This is something that I think will stay with me for a long time.
I sometimes wish that that fear that always seems to rear its ugly head when ever I want to go and do the adventures that I want to do would just not come. That I would not think twice about saying yes to. That comfort zone is soooooooo appealing. Fear is the most dangerous thing in this life I think. Fear can block so much truth. It is so worth it to overcome the fear. This life is so full of possibilities that to be bogged down for too long will only foster more fear.
I am a true believer of the concept of "Like attracts like". I have written about it on here a couple of times. I would say that in this case, the more fear you overcome and work around, the more fearless you will become. But the more you let your fear grow, the more fearful you will be.
I am here to tell you, that it is my goal, and hope yours now too, to overcome that crippling fear.
The journey of this life it too precious to squander. We are of infinite potential. I must (We must) set aside the fear.
