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One Blog Away From Burning Man |
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This Life Ain't Gonna Live Itself
“A warrior lives by acting, not by thinking about acting, nor by thinking about what he will think when he has finished acting.”
~Carlos Castaneda
This is not the
first time I’ve up and left in a week's notice. It may take me a
while to get there, but once my mind is made up--watch the fuck out. I can move mountains,
cut people out of my life or break any habit that no longer serves me. If it suddenly becomes clear to me that my life needs to change--no matter how complicated, how difficult or how scary those changes may be--nothing is more terrifying to me than trying to force my life back into status quo once my consciousness has expanded.
I've learned the hard way that nothing pisses Soul off more than being shunned and She will find ways to act out subconsciously if I ignore her desperate cries. At this point in my life, I just prefer to listen and make the hard choices. It's certainly much easier than the ugly bottom I will inevitably hit when I don't follow my heart fearlessly. Not painless. No change worth making comes without suffering. It's easier because I'm taking full responsibility for those choices, instead of letting life make them for me. Usually when I don't make the change I KNOW I need to make myself, life will make it for me and it will come complete with whatever lesson I was fearfully trying to avoid. Multiplied by three.
And if a half-wit like myself has the courage to follow my heart—you certainly can.
August 25th, 2011: I am only able to happily return to LA because I know for sure I am leaving. The entire drive back, I make mental lists of what needs to get done in order to make my break from the City of Lost Souls.
After being gone for a week, I arrive home to only three pieces of mail. What sad excuse for a "grown up" only gets three pieces of mail after being gone a full week??? Me. That's who. And two of them are simply to alert me of my magazine subscriptions coming to an end. It’s as if I’ve already left.
August 28th, 2011: Since I had nothing better to do while I was scrambling for work most of July and August, I took it upon myself to organize every single inch of my life. Every closet. Every box of paperwork. Every nook and cranny. This makes packing very, very easy. All I have to do is buy four big bins from Target. It’s almost too easy.
As I mentioned, Soul knows what She’s doing long before I do—I’m always playing catch up with Her big plans. Apparently She knew I was leaving quite some time ago. A very close friend of mine reminds me, “You can only spend 2 days a month manifesting this reality for so many years before eventually—it’s going to happen.”
Flashback: Flight...or Flight?
As I mentioned: this isn't my first time disassembling a life in a week...I'm getting pretty good at this drill.
Spring ’05: I finally can’t take being married any more (marriage feels like prison to me) and work up the courage to end it. We try to coexist for a week or two while I work out different living arrangements, but that goes terribly awry (he gets wasted and throws shit at me) so I end up leaving most of my stuff (everything) and taking my prized possessions (my Bose speakers) one day while he’s at work. For the next 3 months I’m homeless. I squat at Maggie’s, house sit and rent a beach cottage for a month until I find a place to rent…
Spring ’06: Phetasy is born. I am spinning in place—this time it’s a small town—and in love with yet another man who doesn’t feel the same way. The rest is history. I make the decision to hit the road a week before I actually do. Sound familiar?
November ’07: The shit hits the fan in my family. I get blamed for a lot of it. I’m guilty of some of it. It's the closest I will hopefully ever come to killing myself. It’s really too long and complicated and depressing to get into; not to mention I’ve had to do a ton of work to put it all behind me and not be totally fucked in the skull.
Maggie has graduated from college and left Newport to try something different. In a moment of desperation, I trust my inner wisdom, pack up an entire HOUSE in a week and hit the road for Utah where I will work the ski season and squat in Maggie’s studio.
Spring ’07: Park City is getting mighty small and I’m going stir crazy. I have barely enough money saved to head back to LA—the city I have been trying to return to since I left when I was 20. I make up my mind and am gone the next day. I’ve been in LA ever since and it’s the longest I’ve lived in one place my whole life.
In high school this flight instinct never let me down. I would always leave the party and then hear “the cops came right after you left”. I will never know what I have been avoiding all these years I’ve honored my instinct to run for my life but I’m grateful I never stuck around to find out.
August 29th, 2011: I’ve designated trusted friends to take care of some of my more personal items (the headless Buddha, my keyboard, my meditation bowl, etc…). My life fits neatly into two suitcases and the Baby Car. That night I receive a text from my good friend--we’ll call her Bonnaroo.
Bonnaroo: I know you’re the only person who would probably be down for something last minute like this, but how do you feel about Burning Man…?
Me: I don’t know how I’m going to get out of here. That pushes my departure date up by 5 days. It seems almost impossible to finish everything I need to finish, see everyone I need to see and get ready for Burning Man--an event people spend 6 months preparing for…
….count me in.
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