I have many things to tell you.
I was overwhelmed with the response to my “Pulling a Geographic” note on Facebook. So utterly overwhelmed. I printed out all of the comments and they sit, stapled together, on my bedside table, for when I lie awake at night (as I have been quite a lot lately), doubting what I am trying to do.
Shortly after I lost my job, I took the online class at Mondo Beyondo, mostly because my friend Eliza told me to, and she is wise. I found it incredibly effective in many ways, but mostly, in freeing my thinking about what my life could actually be like. It dared me to believe that I could live a different life altogether. Even though the afternoon in which I first started to consider tour directing didn’t come until months later, I’m not sure I would have contemplated it at all without that class, and I certainly would not have been able to push through the initial fear and doubt and “Well, you can’t do THAT, what are you, crazy?” inner voice that has defeated who knows how many off-the-beaten-path ideas like this in my past.
I met with a career-counseling therapist in the spring, and after six sessions, all we could come up with is that I had no choice but to go back to doing what I was doing. I was overwhelmed with hopelessness, and some small, quiet part of me just kept resisting. It felt wrong. I didn’t want to accept that this was my lot in life, the only possible path. I didn’t want to resign my life to an environment where, according to all the evidence, I don’t belong.
The thing is, we only go around once, and there is too much out there that I don’t know about yet.
I want to live a life of constant knowledge and experience and adventure. Horizons expanded beyond what I can even conceive at this point. I want to be creative, and thereby live creatively. I want to learn something new, meet someone new, see something new, every single day.
A life less ordinary, indeed.
:::
postscript