Day 2: Writing

December 2 – Writing. What do you do each day that doesn’t contribute to your writing — and can you eliminate it? (Author: Leo Babauta)

I guess the worst thing that I do everyday that doesn’t contribute to my writing is thinking I’m not a writer. I can’t even think about how many times I’ve looked into writing blog posts for some extra cash and thought I didn’t have the skills to write something compelling enough, not sassy or punchy enough. I think how that kind of writing doesn’t contribute or relate to my career, but even now in my career, I’m published. I got paid and my name is on the front cover.

Then I go back and think about all the times I was praised for my writing and I have that running dialogue in my head about how I can improve my writing. Thank you, Lynda Barry, you are Queen of the Universe, and I will take your writing class someday. But that reminds me that I do need to pick up your book again for inspiration, for a pep talk. Really, you’re amazing because I know you’re confident in me all the way from Wisconsin.

And I’m always surprised at how easily a story can pour out of me given a prompt. Why should I poo-poo my almost daily chats with a friend when one thought, a few words, and next thing I’ve written a sexy short story that had someone else written it, I would have paid to read.

So part of my challenge will be to write 750 words a day. Today, I’ve already written over 2000 to catch up in this experiment that I already love. Thanks, Blondie for funemployment times.

Day 3: Moment

December 3 – Moment.

Pick one moment during which you felt most alive this year. Describe it in vivid detail (texture, smells, voices, noises, colors).

(Author: Ali Edwards)

The moment I felt most alive this year was not a moment in the sense that it was a few seconds, a fleeting feeling, or a moment in the larger sense of a moment in an era, but a slice of an evening. Earlier this summer, and perhaps it may have been technically on Independence Day, I went to a very new friend and colleague’s wedding. I didn’t even meet her fiancee until earlier that week, and I was invited to the wedding upon meeting the bride-to-be approximately nine months earlier. While I very much appreciated the oral invite, I had just met this woman upon embarking on a new adventure in leadership for myself. I thought, “That’s nice, she feels obligated to invite me because she’s inviting a few other folks at this board retreat whom she’s known for years, but there’s no way I’m going to be going to this wedding in 7 months in New Hampshire.” I’m always terrible at saving for travel, and I didn’t see how I could motivate to save money for what was to me a destination wedding having only been to the East Coast only three other times in my 35 years. Cut to months later, and my job was in complete disarray, I wanted to make it to Detroit for the US Social Forum, and I could think of nothing better than to get my ass to this wedding and to hop around parts of the East Coast I had never been to.

I had already arrived at this evening and this moment having experienced many amazing and life-affirming moments in the prior week. I bought my plane ticket the week before, had called my friend earlier in the month to RSVP and her still not knowing very well responded with, “That’s great, Ripp! I’m so glad you’re going to try to make it!” I know she meant it, and I was glad to be working with this woman, but I know I was making selfish plans to be able to share her important moment – her wedding.

Detroit was a whirlwind of the hard work of social activism with some of the hardest parts being the social part of that. Walking around this struggling city full of genuine hustlers with a bright, fluorescent orange wristband marking you as someone to stop and ask, “Where are you from? Why are you here? Who do you work for or with? What are you doing tonight? Are running a workshop?” felt like being part of living, breathing tangible social network. You couldn’t tweet fast enough to keep up with what was going on. I gave my workshop and at least had a place to stay for part of the time, but didn’t have any set way to get to my next destination, Boston. I was operating on a leap of faith pretty rare for me – where there’s a will, there’s a way. Being connected to this amoeboid network got to where I needed to go. Next thing I know, I was on an overnight bus with a bunch of youth who were returning to Boston. Unfortunately, this meant I couldn’t observe driving through a new part of the country for me, but I needed the sleep.

So I got to Boston without a place to stay, but amid protestations, I stayed with the pre-nuptial couple for several days. I did make it to Cape Cod and Provincetown for a few days, and also there experienced so many new things being a first time visitor to Massachusetts. It took me getting all the way there from San Francisco to go on my first whale watching trip where I saw a baby calf whale leaping out of the water. Yet none of these were THE moment. That moment was to come later in the week.

And then the moment arrived. The wedding was planned at a beautiful lake house in New Hampshire. Several friends and family had arrived the day prior to help set up and take care of last minute details. Whilst not accomplishing weddingly duties, we accomplished vacationly duties – relaxing, playing games, BBQ-ing, and forging new friendships. A few times in the lead up to the wedding I had heard the story of another friend in the group’s wedding – a group skinny dip – how amazing it was and apropos to that moment. Well, nothing I love better than a group skinny dip at the lake.

And what a magical day, the day of the wedding. Sunny and temperate, I had finished my weddingly duties the previous evening so I didn’t need to accomplish much in the morning but have a leisurely breakfast and enjoy the lake. The ceremonial time arrived, and the joining of the couple and community occurred from an outdoor chapel overlooking the lake. Then the wedding party moved off to the lake house for a reception and evening of celebration. Food and drink and dancing and laughing – really, could it get any better?

But it could. The guests were played off the dance floor by Mr. Marley. Having worked up a sweat from vigorous booty shakin,’ I instigated some fellow guests into shedding the constrictive wedding fancy party clothes for our own skinny dip. I made for the dock down the hill trying hard not to trip on a tree root in the dark. I knew I had to make it to the floating dock just off the shore, and I was surprised that I couldn’t see it, but I knew what direction it was in.

My two new buddies followed quickly behind me but had trouble getting out of their monkey suits while all I had to really do was pull off my dress, get out of a few underthings, and unstrap my sandals. Then I slipped into the cool water, black as oil and began swimming towards the invisible dock nervous that I would overshoot it or swim too far too either side remembering that it wasn’t exactly a quick swim from shore. Also nervous that I was overconfident in leading a bunch of folks into the water who were following me. But I blasted the nervousness and bit of fear away with laughter and splashing and continued stroking towards the dock, egging on the growing party of wedding guests cum skinny dippers.

It was dark all around but for the endless points of light in the night sky and the dots of other lake houses, and if I remember correctly, the moon had only just begin to rise from the horizon. Only slight gradations of grey and off black defined the water from the trees on the hillside from the night sky. Finally, the dock loomed like a dark grey lump in the darkness, and I swam with fervor towards it feeling my body slice through the soft, clean lake water – a change from the sharp, frigid salty Pacific I’m used to swimming in.

Being the slightest bit tipsy, and maybe the teeniest bit stoned, I was relieved when my hand felt the squishy algae along the edge of the wooden dock feeling along towards the metal ladder, slightly rough from exposure to the environment. Why, even without a wet bathing suit, do you always feel like you’ve gained 25 pounds when you try to lift yourself out of the water? I grabbed onto the ladder rungs and just about hurled myself up and over it to flop onto the deck to catch my breath. It was cool and damp which softened the roughness of the wood grain against my bare skin. I could hear my comrades splashing towards me as I marveled at the surreality of being three thousand miles away from home floating on just a nano amount of water that makes up most of the earth with new found friends.

And here they were flopping onto the wooden deck like so many seal lions at Pier 39 back at home. Other senses heightened by the lack of vision that informs so much of most us, even being fully adjusted to the darkness, it wasn’t worth bothering to even try to see facial expressions. All of us had to rely on sound and feel to interact in our night time games which somehow I decided required rocking the boat by standing on the ladder and forcing the dock to sway up and down and walking the plank by jumping off the dock or one was not made a member of the Order of Dock. So quickly do even anarchists anti-authoritarians descend into a Lord of the Flies mentality because being the stranger to most of all these already familiar to each other folks, I could play the leader, instigator, and class clown that I had repressed for so many years under my parents’ roof where I was socialized to be a shy and obedient mouse.

In this moment, I felt free of judgment and guilt. Everybody playing by my game in the dark had met me in most cases less than 24 hours prior and upon departing the lake that night or the next morning may never see me ever again in their lives. They might not even recognize me at breakfast the next morning because they didn’t catch my name but “Queen of the Order of the Dock” and couldn’t see well enough in the dark to see my face. A Buddhist teacher I have read wrote a book called “The Work of This Moment” and even more interesting, I’m reflecting back on this now when the next day after this night on the lake I canoed around with one of my new buddies and told him about this book and how it helped me get through my last year of college, losing my dad suddenly nine years prior, and a three-month stay in the hospital. Even now it’s one of the only Buddhist books I’ve ever read, and I’ve since decided it was time to release the book to the world, and I gave that book to my canoeing buddy.

Without delving into it much deeper than what I’m about to say, isn’t it fascinating that one of the moments I felt so alive this year was in a moment where I wasn’t having all my senses overloaded with information – in fact I had one of my most important senses taken away? I didn’t have my visual synapses firing on high. In that moment, we were all just about on a level playing field where we couldn’t judge or let visual cues about each other filter through so many lenses. I couldn’t tell you much about the other 6 people or so who arrived at the dock besides I knew the person could swim and was male or female or perhaps guess a range in age from the sound of the person’s voice, and I don’t remember anyone having a regional accent. It was a moment where I could shed not only my clothes, but my worries, judgments, fears, guilt, and so many other insecurities. All I needed to know at that moment was that I could trust these invisible strangers and that I had enough energy left to swim back to the lake shore. I’m not sure what could make me feel more alive than having only two concerns, both of which I was confident in my abilities. It’s those moments that make me realize that the work of the moment is to shed those things away that don’t make me feel alive. Realizing each moment of being alive is the work. Oh and Happy Birthday, Dad. You would’ve been 61.