On Strength

I feel strong today. I have not felt this kind of strong, specifically, in a long time: Like there's a wide horizon of possibility ahead, adventures yet untaken, and I'm game. I have the energy for it, the desire to try navigating through new problem space. 

I'm reminded of something my print shop guy said last week: "To worry is to doubt God."

To worry is to doubt. The universe. Oneself. Everything.

Nothing special changed, except that I received a new worry today and it was the worry that finally broke the load. I'm out of capacity for being held hostage by an array of concerns that never quite change and are not especially important, except that they insist on their importance by imposing on my peace.

We forget, entangled as we are in the intrigues and hamster wheel of economy, that being alive is a crazy thing. So much can happen and is happening all the time. I'm not missing it to be in front of a screen most of my day, infusing myself with heroin shots of eternal-scroll short vids. I refuse.

I want to move my body on earth and in water and feel the sun kiss my skin. I want the wind to blow hard at me in Tintagel. I want to taste my food, and read books on the terrace with a pleasing beverage. I want to touch trees and breathe in forest, to stoop down and collect chestnuts from their moist, opened armour. I want scrambled eggs and hot chocolate, and sand between my toes, and laughing with my friends over candles. I want to be kissed by my lovers, and to give birth to lots of beauty.

I don't think I should only get to have these things if I make enough money to avoid the micromanagement of a feudal lord. The game of this past few years has been to frontload these things instead—make them the priorities, not my rewards for good behaviour.

If I'm honest with myself, it's going fine. Better than fine: Beautifully. Still: I'm not rich, so I worry.

But I think that's the point: To be able to live beautifully without hoarding resources. To know that compounding interest is only one form of abundance you want in your life, and not the most important by a long shot. You want health first. You want love most. You want beauty, because what is the point of waking up if your senses cannot rest on something truly sublime at least once a day, ideally more?

Today I divest the worry. I blow it out of my open hand as one would blow a kiss. It doesn't matter. What matters is to live. I can be braver about it now.

Undeveloped

When you decide to turn a small occurrence into something bigger than the sum of its parts, your life can change in unexpected ways. I love this story of a guy who found a roll of film in the middle of a blizzard in New York, then committed himself (and his girlfriend) to finding the owner by broadcasting the photos and turning them into a project bigger than himself ... and bigger than their origins.

It's a quest that brings them to Europe for the first time and culminates in a number of new experiences and friendships. His reflection on the owner is also telling: everyone they met along the way "opted in" to participate in this project, but her own participation was not her choice. It is something that happened, something that brewed and mutated on the other side of the world while she was back home, living her life. Eventually it found her and drew her unwittingly in, a tidal pull whose impact vastly outweighs the mundane act of losing a roll of vacation film.

Humor me ››

Scribe: Life as Blank Canvas

SCRIBE MUNDO DE PAPEL from ladies on Vimeo.

Writers, and maybe creative people in general, have a special relationship with paper and ink, which is at least one reason I find this Mexican Scribe spot so magnifico.

Beeg said in private discussion that it would have been funner as a Sharpie ad, and I agree. But that's probably because nobody our age buys these kinds of notebooks; we've all graduated to costly (but buttery soft!) Moleskines.