Lunchtime writing

I'm sitting at my desk, putting the final touches on my morning. I'm returning calls, I'm returning emails, I'm doing, doing, doing.

But what I'm really doing -- is avoiding.

I'm avoiding tackling the writing assignment that I agreed to do. And I'm avoiding it very well. My excuses and my delays are all quality work. They sound good, like "when I'm done with this call, I'll start on that essay rewrite.." They are SO good that I believe them, I believe the lies that I tell myself, that I'm "going to get going.."

It's easy to see this in myself because for 14 years, I've seen it in other people that have told me without blinking that they were going to do such and such goal "as soon as... (the holidays, christmas, summer vacation, their divorce, when kids get out of school...).

The delays and excuses are all well thought out, rehearsed, just as mine are. We mean well, we really do. We really think that if we can just get over (blank), we'll have this time to do the things that we really WANT to do.

And each time I say the excuse, the stuff that's really important gets cast farther and farther from me.

The truth is, the only way to start is to start. To simply put down the phone, the email, to not answer the door or go on one more errand but to simply start. What is it that I am -- that we all are -- so afraid of?

I use to think that it was a fear of failure of some kind. Now I know differently. It's not failure I fear..it's finishing the feat and then saying, "wow, that's not so good after all. That achievement didn't satisfy my soul as I thought it would or that achievement, finishing of task didn't give me the thrill that was promised." I think the fear is more one of being let down when we throw our heart into something we love.

We're like crazed romantics, fearing to love with our heart and soul the things that we have hidden from ourselves for so long. Like the kid who fears asking out the beauty in math class because she just might say, 'yes'. And then there's that question, "NOW WHAT?"

I might finish my essay and find it's terrible. I might edit my novel and find that it really isn't that great of a story OR that the real story is still four or five drafts down the road. It might mean I have to work at this dream that has been tugging at my sleeve all my life. I might have to give myself over to the work of writing and then, have to rethink my life...that would be a LOT OF WORK!

I realize that dreaming is the easy part.

So I keep pushing the buttons on my phone, keep returning email, keep that dream at bay. Something about having the dream "out there" is alluring, like an unopened present that we think we'll get to open after all the other presents are opened from the tree.

Truth be told, chasing dreams is a heady business. It takes a lot of guts and soul to go after things that we've held close to us for years, kept quiet and thought about. It means that you may have to lay down some other things that you've become quite good at - maybe even excelled at -- so that you can become the person that you've always had in you to become. It means that you open up the toolbox of your skills and realize that you're short a few items and that getting those tools will require sweat, work, tears, pain. It means that you may look in the mirror in five years and look back over the first half of your life and say, "wow, what was all that other stuff about, anyway? How was I so far off track?"

It means engaging a larger world than the one you've beheld for so long.

So I start again. I make new resolutions, cross out meetings that I don't need to attend so that I can attend the soul work that is rising within me. I remember that the direction in which I go may be more important than the progress of that journey.

Excuse me, I've got work to do...