Serenity… refocus – seek joy – thrive

I’m going to try something. It’s odd, I think. It may even be just a tad narcissistic, but I’m going to do it anyway. I’m going to interview myself over the next year, and ask a question a day.

Oh, why, why, why would you want to do such a thing, Nanette? (See, there I go already.)

Well, for one thing, I mentioned a few weeks ago that I was going to create my own life. And I have been doing anything but ever since. I am easily distracted, this is true. Life, yapping on people’s blogs, cleaning the bathroom (it’s amazing what looks more fun when I am in avoidance mode.) But it was more than that, than just avoidance. I wasn’t yet ready to trust myself, my instincts. It’s kind of hard to “just go with your gut” when you’ve spent years ignoring the little bugger. It’s not that I’ve ever been especially practical or sensible, it’s just that – except for a very few occasions – I have thought that I should be doing something else other than what I wanted to do. What it felt like I should do.

If that makes any sense, and it may not because I am a terrible explainer.

I almost didn’t trust my instincts enough to put up my first post on this topic of creating my own life. I agonized about making it public, wondered if it was too sappy, too woowoo, too big a step (it was barely a shuffle), too – everything. Much better, I thought, to keep it private and safe and warm. It was too new, I said.

But I finally gathered my courage, thought “trust” – and threw my little fledgling out of the nest. And then, that evening, I received a most wonderful gift in return. This half-feathered, shaky, squeaky little creation of mine had bumped into someone’s heart, and they wrote and told me about it.

Oh, man. This was an old, dear friend who I hadn’t spoken to in a long time writing to me, telling that what I said resonated with him. And not only that, but he had realized that I was right about something I told him years ago (I will mightily resist the urge to say, “Of course!”) and that he had been making changes in his own life. Good ones, happy ones on the heels of other good changes that appeared out of the blue.

Yes, of course – tears, when I read that.  Not only did he not think I was silly, he affirmed what I had been thinking, and how it was working in his own life. He’ll be on his own journey of self-discovery, self-creation, while I am on mine so in some ways we’ll travel together!

So, what does this all have to do with interviewing myself? I believe that that needs to be my first step. Part of creating my own life – but not the biggest part – is exploring my writing, expanding not only my ability – a lot of that will come with practice, I think – but my depth. There is little enough of it to explore right now because, as I’ve mentioned before, for all my yapping about “me, me, me” I don’t say an awful lot. Habit, nature, whatever – I rarely put anything out there that hits anywhere near close to any bones. Not even if I am writing a private journal type thing, the habit of silence is just too ingrained, I guess. But – if I want to be a writer of any depth, I have to, I think, at least skim near the bony parts, no?

I think of myself, my writing right now, as toodling around on my trike, gaining a little on the people on two-wheelers and training wheels. That’s in my sights; I ask myself, “Can you do that?” and I think, yeah, I can. I’m a little more dubious about the 10-speeds. “Can you do that?” and I think, yeah. Sure. Probably – soon. With enough peddling and practice. I’ve got friends on all those bikes and eventually I’ll get there.

But then, you know… I’ve got friends who can fly. I don’t know if that’s what I really want to do; it takes a lot of work and practice and excavating, I think. I’d like to try, though. I may not ever soar, but I might eventually be able to flap a few feet above the ground.

But all that, and everything else I have planned, begins with a beginning. And the interview is mine.

I’m going to make up my own questions instead of getting them from a book or something. Though I may seek inspiration of sorts somewhere, because a year’s worth is a lot of questions. And, of course, reader suggestions will always be welcome, or anyone who is doing this, too. “What would you ask me?”  I’ll ask. Or, better yet, what would you ask yourself?

I want to do it this way, and make it an entire year instead of a few weeks or months because it is my hope that once I run out of the easy questions, and the easy answers, I will dig down deeper for the more difficult ones. Or ask the same question again after a passage of time, but demand something more than the answer I gave before. Use this process to train myself to give.

You know? It all makes perfect sense to me, but …

[painting up top via here and Zuky]

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 21st, 2010 at 8:13 am and is filed under bellybutton bedazzlement, creating your own life, Human Beams, in with the woo. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.