restless.

I wrote something to post here last week. It was long and rambly and personal and I just couldn't manage to post it. It sat in a draft all week and I tweaked a word every now and then. I thought that maybe it wasn't good. (But who am I kidding? I always think it isn't good.) I thought that it was too personal or revealed something a little too honest about me. And then today, I realized it isn't any of that. It's just that I've lost the nerve I had built up. You have to be nervy to write something down, wiggle yourself out of it, pop it off your head like a too-tight sweater, and then put into the world before other eyes and minds. You really have to be brave. Creating art is both the most liberating and terrifying thing I know.

Well it feels mighty stale to me now because it's been sitting in my computer/brain for many days. But sometimes the point of my being here, at this rinky-dink blog, is not to write beautifully or perfectly or even well. Sometimes it is just to steel my nerves and toughen up my weak heart.

My thoughts lately have been on the artist's life. I have been feeling old lately (and getting older still). But the drumbeat in my ears grows louder and it is this: if you're going to do it, then do it.

There is nothing I want more. There is nothing that scares me more. There is nothing else for it but to do it. How many times must I say it before it sticks in my own ears? I'm not sure. But I'll keep saying it until it does.

I read once, long ago, that the average smoker must quit many times before they're successful. The number was high, I think, something like 40 or 50 times. That was always my reassurance. I would say to myself, Yes I know I failed all those other times, but that means I'm more likely to succeed this time. And you know, it was actually true. After failing dozens of times (certainly more than 50), I actually quit smoking. I actually did it. It is my reminder (and if you like, yours) that persistence will be rewarded, even when the going seems most bleak. Even when you find you are dreadfully disappointed in yourself. Maybe you have failed, but that only means that next time you might not.

So now I'll let you be and release my self-analysis and weak nerves to you. And you - you read on, and make these nerves strong.

***

It’s a devil of a thing.

Restless, restless.

I walked into work one morning a few weeks ago, about a mile, from the auto shop where I dropped off my car. It was the coolest morning I have felt yet in DC and the act of walking in the mild air brought me squarely back to Boston. I used to walk to work every day there. At that moment, I felt a wild force of longing for the New England fall that I’ll miss this year. And from that moment on, through the long day, I felt restless.

Restless legs run in my family. During dinner, there was always a gentle thunder of bouncing knees under the table.

John Steinbeck said something in Travels with Charley (which I can’t quote precisely), something about growing older and always thinking he would soon grow out of his restlessness. And it just never happened.

I get restless in my legs when I’ve been sitting at a desk for too long. I get restless in my heart when I think of places I’ve loved and left. I get restless in my arms and fingers when I need to write something but just-don’t-know-what. And I get restless in my brain when I feel there must be something for me to think or say that I haven’t found yet. What is it?

I didn’t know what to call it until I read Norman Mailer’s words, wisely noted at this post at The Bark:

“...you will walk around with ants in your brain.”

And that is it. If I might say so, I’ve had ants in my brain for the last two months, and maybe for the last year, and maybe for my whole life. Those ants, I believe, come from knowing what you are meant to do, but excusing yourself for whatever reasons you can find. Do we all have ants in our brains? I can’t say. Do you?

But when I say you know what you are meant to do, I only mean that you know what you love. And I’ve said that many times before.

I know someone who dreams wildly and believes in every possibility. He always sees what might be, not what can’t. It sounds cliche when I write it down, but it’s true in a way that startles me into believing myself. I always resist at first - I hear all the no reasons, never any of the yes ones. But there is a simple magic in just believing that the wildest things you imagine will come true.

A few nights ago, I was looking at National Geographic Explorer Grants. I was having secret and wild fantasies about travelling and telling stories and living an uncommon life. It was a rushing whitewater torrent of mental fantasy, the kind that makes you feel like running around the block to burn the energy off. But it was also the never-in-a-million-years fantasy. I casually showed it to Jacob that night and he immediately replied, as he usually does, You should apply! In that instant, his amazing ability to dream openly and wildly clashed with my surge of obligations and expectations and responsibility, and so I did what any independent lady would do: I burst into tears.

It’s something I have been mulling over for many days now.

Because.

Because just the other day, someone asked me this question: Now, how does one go about figuring out what one's dream job is?

I think you must begin by letting your dreams get wild. Let them get really wild and rowdy and run rampant. Don’t interject with the reasons they can’t be true. Stop shooting them down. Just stop. The power to let yourself dream with abandon is the power to believe in yourself and to be wide open when something comes your way. Open and empowered we must be.

After all, there is no dream job. I am far too young and inexperienced to say that, but I will. There is only living. People and love and living.

These words needed more digesting before I was ready to say them, so I’ve done it and digested and now they’re here. And let me add the final piece, an addendum for today. I held back because something in me said that it was wrong to say I was restless. It expressed some discontent that I’m afraid to reveal. I tend to feel that discontent is rather wrong and one of the seeds of unhappiness. But my thought has brought me here: this discontent, my discontent, my restlessness, is the stirring of a creative soul. It is the fire that pushes me forward. It is a discontent that says I can imagine something that doesn’t exist yet. And I think that might be the cranking of the human-art-machine inside of me.

And perhaps you?