Doin' It

The problem with being a grownup in this world is that you're encouraged not to dream. The older you get the less risks you're supposed to take. Much of this should be a product of wisdom. But far too often such behavior is fueled far more by conditioning. My grandmother wanted to be a seamstress. So she went to school for it. Still childless she began to take courses. She wanted to moved to Paris. She wanted to make clothes that the world would see. But not long before she would have graduate my grandfather told her to stop. And she did. Because that's what she'd been told a good wife was supposed to do.

I know that "supposed" is a tricky term for folks who subscribe to the idea of "free will". "Supposed", in that context, is relative based on each moment. But if there's a plan for each of us, going the other way might mean digging up a chest of crabs instead of one of treasure. It might mean a week in the Bahamas as opposed to a month in Fiji. It reminds me of something a woman said to me once, something I may have quoted here or stored in the back of my brain for this particular blog.

She said that I wanted it all. While some folks settled for just a piece of their dreams I wouldn't be fully satisfied unless I got the whole pie. For better or for worse this is true. Hence my life is an ever-spinning roulette wheel influenced by God, myself, and the others I welcome into the game. It's like that for all of us.

Last night I was reading a piece on Modest Mouse, a Seattle band that's been making music for almost as long as I've been writing for a living. It's frontman, Isaac Brock, has been homeless, bashed in the face with bottles, frustrated, drug-addicted and at many times bored, during his journey. But now, in his 30s, he's got a house, and a multi-layered career, a woman who loves him and peace of knowing how to enjoy the blessing of stints where you don't have to do anything at all but clean the crib and spend time with your loved ones. That's the kind of peace I've been looking for.
And I've been searching for new ways to find it.

For a good while I was afraid of becoming another person obsessed with "things". I never wanted to start whoring myself just to have a little comfort in my life. Then I realized that I was starting to whore myself just so that I could say that I wasn't another person obsessed with things, doing jobs I hated as much as any prospective 9-to-5 and barely living doing it.

The whole thing here and now is creating a new rulebook, one that I that can better help me to get the things I want, and also separate me from so many of my peers who seem determined to make the same mistakes as those who came before us. When I was writing about how my life was this box that was emptying out, I had no idea of how deep it was going to go. It wasn't just a matter of material things or personal habits or religious convictions. It was about the way I saw it all: how I spent money, who I chose to work with, strategies for long-term living as a creative entrepreneur.
Where I was I could barely breathe, and I didn't even know it.

Now I'm not afraid to admit that when Range Rover makes their first hybrid or alternative fuel car I want to able to afford to grab one of the first off the line. I want my kids to know what pizza tastes like in Rome and how they roll sushi in Osaka. I want to vacation at the tip of the new South Africa and build a business that might have branches nationwide. And these things won't just be dreams that flood my mind while I sit like a potato living in a cloud. They won't just be the empty words spewing from my lips between rounds at the next "it" social event. I never want to stop feeling like a kid. I won't even stop believing that I can do anything. Out.