oh, that again.

February 1, 2015 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

So, I’ve restarted my work on relationships with a new mentor, someone who shares the lineage of the woman I’d been working with, which means that this morning, I got to read aloud my entire sad history of relationships and sex. Again.

Good. Times.

Interestingly enough, though, I was struck this morning about how my avoidance of or aversion to commitment in relationships parallels my aversion to commitment in my career and work-life.

I’ve said and heard it a thousand times: Romance and Finance are two sides of the same coin. And I knew that working on one would bring about change or awareness in the other.

But, somehow rereading my pattern — of splitting when things get weird, or choosing partners I don’t want, or not being open to those men who are into me — highlighted what is happening for me in career-land.

A friend said to me last week that it sounds like it’s time for me to choose a career path. Not a job. But something I can follow through on.

Eek. I hate that. I’ve always hated the idea of having to choose one thing. But I recounted this all to my mom and told her that it’s similar to how I had to choose theater over music. I miss music. And it’s not like I’ll never play again, but I had to choose to put my creative efforts into theater if I wanted to get anywhere with it.

I hated that. I hate that I can do and be so many things, and I have “so much potential,” and so many varied interests, that choosing one is incredibly frightening for me. Like I’ll choose poorly, to quote Indiana Jones. What if by choosing theater, I’m turning my back on a fate in music or painting? What about all the other roads my life could take?

And yet. By not choosing one, I take no roads, or follow a little of each, and I feel stymied and frozen.

Commitment leads to freedom in that way.

And when it’s going to come to career, I’m going to have to choose. Sure, I could easily and very successfully be: A teacher, a writer, a psychologist, a mediator, a community engagement executive.

I could be any of these things. Hell, I could even be a doctor or a lawyer or a spaceman if I wanted.

Well, maybe not a spaceman.

But I haven’t wanted to choose. Because what.if.I’m.wrong.

What if I choose something and it doesn’t turn out well? What if I fail at finding “my calling” this lifetime? What if NONE of those things listed above actually make me want to get up and go to work?

What if I put my trust and faith in the wrong career, or — to parallel — in the wrong man?

Well, sorry, lady, you gotta eat.

And you gotta choose.

Sure, people change careers throughout their lives, but I’ve changed mine so many times before age 30 that I think I’ve played that card out.

Therefore. One of these things is going to have to be it. Whether it makes my heart sing or not. No, I didn’t want to “give up” music. But I did, and the theater thing I love, even if it’s slowed down for now.

None of the above professions makes my heart sing, per se. There’s no glow surrounding any of them saying, Pick me Pick me. But each inspires me to help bring others together, to inspire others to heal, to bring unity into the world.

So, no. I don’t know, still, what I want to be when I grow up. But I am warming up to the idea of choosing one path. And actually moving forward on it.

career · change · despair · faith · fear · hope

Rock Saves.

January 30, 2015 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

As you may have noticed by now, I’ve been in a bit of a maudlin mood since attaining a job in retail. Since that time, in the last week alone, my sponsor had to let me go in order to focus on her own healing work, I got a traffic ticket while on my way to visit a pregnant friend, and my four stalwart neighboring trees were torn down.

Plus, I slammed my pinkie in a drawer.

It’s been a No good very bad day, and you can call me Alexander.

It’s been pretty bad, and even before the tree massacre, I was on the phone with a friend saying that it felt like a series of trap doors: just when you think it can’t get worse, it does. I wouldn’t be surprised for “The Big One” to hit, or my car to break down.

That said, yesterday, in a funk over the trees (read: hysterically crying over the loss of everything solid in my life — yes, perspective is a lost art), I drove my car in to work instead of taking public transportation. On came the NPR, because it’s what I usually listen to in the car.

But it wasn’t right. Sure, it’s informative and I enjoy it in a way, but it’s not fun. It’s not uplifting. Unless it’s A Prarie Home Companion.

And so I put on a CD of one of my favorite bands, playing one of their most famous live sets.

I immediately pressed through to one of my favorite songs, one I can count on as an uplifter, and as the song progressed, I turned the volume louder. And louder.

As I sat in that toll bridge traffic, I began to sing along. I began to smile.

I played a series of 4 songs, the last one on repeat as I climbed the circular parking garage. And I felt better.

I have this kind of amnesia when it comes to music: I forget that Rock Saves.

I can go for weeks without music, maybe a few songs on the radio here and there, but not volume up to 40, ear-ringing, loud singing, smile-inducing music.

I felt transformed by the end of my trip from Oakland to San Francisco. If there were another trap door opening beneath me, I felt as though the music was giving me upper body strength to cling to the sides of the trap, and hoist myself out.

The trap may be open beneath me, and it is always an option to fall in, but somehow I felt like I was climbing out of that one. That, for that morning, that previously sob-fest morning, I was not going to continue on like that.

I parked my car and walked toward my job with an actual jaunt in my step, and a bit of that subversive, “I’ve been listening to music really loud,” half-grin on my face. A cute 20-something said hi to me as I jaunted down the sidewalk.

I’ve been walking to work looking solely down at the sidewalk, internally commenting the awful smell of human waste.

Yesterday was a different morning.

Sometimes I feel like I could be diagnosed with manic-depression, the way I can swing from despair to hope! But, perhaps it’s normal. And I’ll never really know, honestly.

When things are going well enough, I never feel the need for anti-depressants, and even when they’re not going well, it’s always temporary, and not debilitating.

So, maybe, simply, Rock Saves.

Maybe, simply, I have a fount of resiliency that I only seem to find in desolate moments.

Yesterday, as I drove to work, I drove through a portal of grace.

Things are not different. All the externals remain the same.

But I have that grin on my face. And I’ve been singing in my car.

fear · finances · insanity · isolation · recovery · relapse

Without Defense

January 22, 2015 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

In the summer, I’d texted friends nearly daily, asking them to help me not quit my desk job. I wrote to them that quitting my job without a plan would be just like an alcoholic taking a drink: Disastrous. Painful. An uncharted trip through hell.

But. I wasn’t connected to the things I knew to do. Few meetings, no sponsor, stuck in the middle of step work I’d started months before.

And so, I drank. Metaphorically.

In the fall, I quit my job, without a plan. I felt elated, relieved, free. Exactly like taking a drink.

And now, I am living the consequences of that decision.

Yesterday, as I walked back to my apartment after more than 8 hours on my feet and little to show for it, I catalogued all the things I missed about my old job.

The short commute, with no bridges or tunnels involved. The normal hours. The flexible hours, when I could take off to go to Trader Joes at lunch, or walk around the gorgeous suburban landscape, or nap at a nearby friend’s before rehearsal. The co-workers I could have conversations with about things that were intelligent or fun or informative.

The kids. The chickens. The pianos.

The sitting.

For all I wailed about wanting a job that didn’t require me to sit in front of a computer for 40 hours a week (and granted I still don’t) the ability to actually sit at all during the day sounds vastly luxurious.

And as I walked home, the catalogue ever increasing, I said aloud, “I made a mistake.”

It was a mistake to quit my job the way I had, without a plan. I knew and had catalogued all the ephemeral perks of that job countless times, knowing what a cush place it was. But I was antsy, restless, hopeless and defiant. And I made a decision to leave.

Now, in the school of life that I’ve come through, I hear much about “not regretting the past,” and true, through the interim period without work, I befriended another unemployed bright person who suggested a crowd funding campaign to pay off my back-rent cancer debt. The campaign was wildly successful, and a check is in the mail this week. In addition, because the goal was quickly reached, a very generous family gave me a donation insisting I spend it on “something fun,” which is how and why I have this fancy new laptop to replace the dinosaur I’d had.

But… other than that? I mean, couldn’t those goals have been accomplished anyway? A campaign have been suggested another time?

Look, I know this retail job I’m in now is temporary. I am trying my best to stave off the Stockholm Syndrome that seems to have engulfed everyone who works there, or anywhere in retail, into thinking that the paltry, hiccuping pay-scale, weak health insurance, and unpredictable schedule is acceptable.

Today, I am trying to forgive the faulty thinking of mine that sent me on this fool’s errand in the first place, comparing it to how I did behave when I was drinking: It’s not cuz I was an awful person that I did what I did, it was because I didn’t know any better, and I didn’t have any tools to combat my insane thinking.

I have to offer myself compassion for the misguided, instant-gratification seeking decision I made. I was not using the tools I knew to use. I was disconnected from the community that helps me not make insane decisions, financial and otherwise.

I do feel, however, that admitting that I made a mistake in quitting that job without a plan is a good first step for me. I am not immune to my own thoughts. I am not solved from throwing myself into the abyss because I think my house is on fire.

I have decades’-driven ruts and habits that I fell over into. And I did not have the diligence or connection to haul me out before I burned my life down instead.

That’s okay.

I mean, it has to be. Right?

career · clarity · exhaustion · fear · health · work

Numbers, Indignation, Holding Patterns: i.e. the Usual.

January 9, 2015 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

I have the delightful learned ability to read a health insurance coverage summary with a hawk’s eye.

Post-cancer, I have become acutely aware of watch-words like “after deductible,” “co-insurance,” and particularly, “lab fees.”

Last week, I met with two of the 3 HR ladies I have worked with at the retail company I now work for. The first, Heidi, I met on the day I waltzed into the HR department with no plan and asked if they were hiring. I then had a wonderful impromptu interview and was subsequently hired. She’s great, personable, real. And someone with whom I can be honest.

To finish up the health insurance thought, I met with another of the HR ladies last week to sign the “permanent hire” paperwork, and to get the particular HR documents I’ll need, and information on eventual benefits.

I’d assumed, working for a large conglomerate corporation, that my health benefit coverage would be fantastic. More people = less $ from me, right? Wrong.

This morning, I logged in to see what my options are, as I have to stay with the Kaiser health insurance, since that’s where all my cancer records and doctors are, plus it’s in walking distance of my house.

I looked at the plan they offered. I saw many watch-words, including all those above. And then I brought out the plan that I’m currently under via COBRA through my old synagogue employer.

My lord. What a better plan.

As someone who needs to get lab tests done fairly regularly, I know that I now pay $10 for them to look and see if my blood is still blood, or if some of it has reverted to cancer.

With the new plan I saw this morning, I’d have to meet a $4,000 deductible… and then I’ll still pay a 20% copay. Besides the hundred or so they’ll take out of my paycheck each month, just to have the plan.

Now, this may all be boring to you. But, number-cruncher that I now am, COBRA costs me $400 a month = $4800 a year.

So they’re kinda similar, now, ain’t they?

How much is a lab test before deductible? I don’t know. A hundred, maybe? How ‘bout the other things I get checked through-out the year that the new plan says, “After deductible” next to.

Knowing that the plan I currently have is a phenomenal one (having done the health exchange comparison, too), I asked the HR woman last week if they could do something about my pay if I keep my own health insurance.

She’d never heard of such a thing. ??!

It is common that if someone is covered by outside insurance, if the company is not paying for it, the employee can get a boost in salary, since the company would be paying insurance, but now can pay the employee instead.

Again, she’d never heard of such a thing. And said, no, that would not be the case here.

Enter the second HR conversation I had last week. It was post-holidays, post-working on New Year’s Day, and I was exhausted, upset, not happy.

This retail, commission, fighting for customers with the other girls on the sales floor thing is not for me.

I walked upstairs to see Heidi. I told her as much, in quite cushioned, complimentary, grateful words.

And she said: I figured that wouldn’t be for you.

But, we love you, you’re one of 2 of 70 employees kept on past the seasonal period. “Give me a week,” she said.

Give me a week to think of another role for you here. We want to keep you, and let me think about where we can utilize you. I have some ideas already, but I have to check them out.

She knows me, sort of. She got one of those hand-made collage holiday cards. I’d gone in to talk to her previously about expectations for the sales positions, and how much hustle one has to do in that role in order to make a living. A living which would equal the paycheck I left at my non-profit desk job.

She said last week that she could see I was someone who thought about the good of the whole, that one’s success is all’s success, and that cut-throat retail floors don’t allow for that.

I later said to a friend, it’s like she called me a communist! But, funnily and astute observed, she’s right. For the good of all! And other Marxist ideologies!

It’s coming to the end of the week she’d asked me for. She was nearly plaintive in her asking me to give her the time to think of something. — They really like me.

In addition, I wrote her an email early this week saying that she needed to have all the information: I do theater. And that means nights and weekends. And if we can keep that in mind as we seek out a new role for me there, that’d be great.

We’ll see what she comes up with. If anything.

If I land back in front of a desk so I can get to theater rehearsals, so be it. As long as I’m earning more than I was at the non-profit.

I mean, come on people. You’re an international corporation. I’m not 23 anymore. I have skills.

Again, we’ll see. Before I go charging off to look for alternative companies, I’ve invested a lot in them already, as they’ve invested in me.

But, should it look like I’ll be a salaried lady again — I’m asking for the health insurance off-set increase.

Because screw that noise.

dating · fear · isolation · love · recovery

"I want to go to there." Good thing I am.

January 8, 2015 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Where there is smoke, there is fire. And where there is fire, we take off our knitted gloves and hold our hands to it.

It’s not that bad. This work. It’s tragic and awful, and would certainly raise eyebrows in most circles. I just got through chronicling the years from high school through, “Then I got sober.”

The phrase “shit show” comes to mind.

And yet, I remind myself, in small, calm handwriting at the end of each of these morning writing sessions that I am not that person anymore. That I have been shaped by her experiences, surely, but that the shape and essence of who I am can’t and couldn’t be eroded.

Someone commented yesterday that I am courageous. And as I go through and into this work on healing my relationship to relationships and love, I know that I am.

Not (only) because I’ve chosen (or been “forced” by fate) to do this work at all, but because of all that has come before that hasn’t broken me.

Injured, scarred, frightened me. Sure. But I sit here today, in my sweats, a space heater licking my calves, half-philz half-trader joes coffee in my mug, and I’m not broken.

I have been through things and experienced them in a way that makes me cautious to the point of isolation against romantic relationships, but that doesn’t make me broken. That makes me habituated to a way of being.

It all comes, for me, down to safety. With others, in my body, in relationship, in intimacy and authenticity. To slowly peel back the traumas and defenses and reveal that there’s nothing to be scared of anymore. Nothing that can harm me the way my high school/college/post-college years did.

I won’t say that my love life in sobriety has been a cake walk or the pinnacle of wise. It used to have a lot of the same patterns as my drinking days. But it doesn’t anymore.

However, there’s a middle ground, I know, between wanton and nunnery.

I want to go to there.

I want to go to the place where I am safe, even in exposing myself. Not because other people are so trustworthy, but because I am. Because my spidey-sense is coming back, and I want to get to a place where I trust it. I don’t have to tap out of the dating game entirely. I just have to listen when the alarms go off, and act accordingly. Take action accordingly.

In previous iterations of my love-life, I have pressed the override button so forcibly, for moments, I did break.

But, I’m not that girl-woman anymore. As I said, I’ve been shaped and molded by her experiences. But I also have my own inherent grace, fortitude, and hope.

And so, where there has been smoke (read: my love life), I have sought the fire (read: my fearful heart). And it will be there that I remove my (boxing) gloves. And learn to love and trust my own self.

fear · finances · hope · recovery · relationships · romance · self-love

"There’s gotta be something better than this…" ~ Sweet Charity

January 7, 2015 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Why, didn’t every 7th grader want to become a botanist and live in a tree to be away from people?

I am at the radically awful and hopeful place of beginning to work on relationships, and my relationship to relationships.

Coincidentally or not, the last time I started this kind of work, I was into the deep and dredging and combing-over-my-sad-history-of-self-abandonment-and-isolation part when I was struck with a bout of Leukemia, and had to stop.

Now that I’m through a round of work on my relationship to money, scarcity, “under-being,” under-earning, me and my mentor agreed that we could work on the other side of the “romance and finance” coin.

Color me thrilled.

In fact, I am looking forward to it, … sort of. Not the work itself, but the results of it.

I am not meant to continue my early patterns of self-insulation through isolation or self-abandonment/-destruction. Or, rather, I’m not content to. What I’m meant to do is really only up to me, isn’t it? And a few strokes of fate, I imagine. (hello, cancer.)

But, whatever role I can have in loosening the noose of “Trust No One,” I am signing up for it.

I do feel that I am in a better place to begin this time than I was about 2 years ago. I’m working with someone who knows me well, who’s walked this path with and before me, and whom I trust and love.

Even though our particular histories are dissimilar, their endings and the feelings they’ve evoked in us became the same.

She’s told me that my feeling of imminence, urgency & impatience with myself and “the world” will fade: I am a 33 year old healthy smart beautiful woman. Why the fuck have I never been in a relationship that’s lasted over 6 months, and only two of them at that? Why have I been unintentionally celibate for years on end or find myself particularly attracted to taken men? My “hot” years are fading; I want to take advantage of them!

And yet. I seem to land in the same place each time I try to throw myself into the ring, or try to avoid it. And so, it’s time to try something else. Something I know will work, because it works for thousands of other people who walk a path of recovery.

I’m not stoked. But I am.

It’s sad stuff to riffle through. There is a Trail of Tears that’s led me here. But I feel ready for this. No, not eager to riffle; yes, eager to heal, move on, move forward. Let whoever I’m supposed to be, or whoever I’m hiding, to integrate.

Does this look like a bright shiny pot of gold(en haired children) at the other end? Likely not.

I finished the work on money, and I’m still in the thick of the results of patterns that brought me here. But I imagine they’ll shift over time.

So, too, I imagine with the love and relationship stuff. I won’t buy a wedding dress at the end of it. But perhaps I’ll buy date one.

(p.s. this missive is in no way a passive request for dating invitations. but thanks.) 😉

career · commitment · faith · fear · work

From Thanksgiving to Thanksgiving.

December 8, 2014 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

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Last Tuesday night as I sat at a rainy Oakland BART waiting for
the shuttle to take me within walking distance of my apartment, my friend
called.

She’d remembered that it was my first day of training for my
department store sales job and wanted to know how it went. I told her, Good. A
lot of corporate training-style stuff. Different department managers
introducing themselves. Lots of powerpoint presentations about the history and
brand of the company. And there were to be 3 days of this.

I told her I was most nervous (I told her I was trying to
call it “curious”) about what would happen when I actually got onto the sales
floor the following Saturday.

I haven’t worked retail since high school.

She told me we were both having “first day” experiences.
She’d just this afternoon signed a contract with a small graphic design firm to
be a partner with them, and she, too, was “curious” as to how it would all work
out.

She told me that morning, she’d read this story about a guy
who’s mentor suggested that he make a decision to not worry for one year. That
whenever he got nervous, or tried to “figure things out,” or was anxious about
an outcome, he made the commitment that he would simply not worry, that he
would trust in the “universe,” and understand that he didn’t have to know the
outcome. He just had to do what was in front of him and take small actions.

Needless to say, he had a great year.

As I huffed into the phone on Tuesday night, walking through
the dark blocks toward my house, I asked my friend if she wanted to make a pact
with each other. That for one year we wouldn’t worry.

And so, we did. We each announced to each other our
commitment (middle names and everything) not to “not worry,” but to catch ourselves as quickly as we
could, and to remember to “let it go,” and, for me, to have faith in the
benevolence of the universe and the unfolding of my path.

When I’m scared of not making my sales numbers, and this
whole retail thing doesn’t really work if you don’t. When I’m worried that
retail hours and theater hours are the same and how will I be able to do both.
When I am concerned that I quit a full-time time to have time to engage in
creative project, to find a “fulcrum” job (more pay, fewer hours), and I’ve
ended up in another full-time job…

I’ve been telling myself this past week, “From
Thanksgiving to Thanksgiving.” Because that’s a year for my friend and me. One year of not worrying. Of trusting that it’ll not only be okay, but that it’ll
be great.

To trust that if I simply do what’s next, make that next
phone call to a friend, hang up that next sweater, show up to that next
audition, the world will have a way of working out.

Sure, I’ve been nervous this week — making calculations,
staring wide-eyed at rehearsal schedules, wondering if this position will be
temporary or not — but I’ve been remembering that catch phrase, whispering it
aloud, and it’s helped.

Today will be my second day on the sales floor. I am scheduled with them through the start of January with an option to extend. I have an audition set up for late January for a great musical. And I have COBRA payments to starting this month.

But I’m not going to worry one bit. ;P

courage · dreams · fear · fulfillment · hope · scarcity · self-denial

Life: Whether you Like it or Not.

November 20, 2014 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

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For many years, I’ve considered my personal and professional
stagnation as though I were a traveler sitting at the base of a crossroad. The
sign pointing in many directions reads any manner of options, but I sit there,
gazing at the sign for eons, waiting for one of the arrows to light up, to
indicate, This, here, Molly, is the way to go. This is the path to your
destiny. This is the path to fulfillment, release, energy and passion. It may
be cloudy at parts, but we promise, this is the way toward your highest good.

Yet, signposts have an annoying way of being inanimate, and this revelation has never happened.

But as I sit today, I recognize something new. Beyond the
fork in the road, I’m beginning to see another path that I hadn’t identified
before. It’s the path of my true desires.

I have sat waiting for the gods to tell me a or b, but
secretly, I’ve always wanted c, and refused to see that as an option. “It’s
hard for your to let yourself dream,” a therapist opined recently.

And it is.

To speak aloud what you truly want is to invite criticism
and disappointment. Better to keep the dreams locked tight, even to the
detriment of myself, because it’s “easier” than going after what I really
want.

The problem with that pattern is that it means you don’t
develop a history and a catalogue of places where you have moved beyond those
doubts and spoken up, acted up, been seen. And so you continue to assume what
you really want is not something you can have.

The history of denying what I want is long. It is best to be
quiet, unheard, unseen, have few needs, because the lower you set the bar the
easier it is to meet the meagerness.

I reflected yesterday on the way to our preview night of the
play how you can always set yourself up to “succeed” when you place the bar
achingly low. When you paint over your dreams with “realistic expectations,” you’re never called to reach out of your comfort zone. You can sit on the couch
watching Netflix until the end of time, eating peanut butter out of a jar, and
quietly erode all sense of the divine spark within you.

Not that I’ve done that. (wink)

But the divine has a way of being omnipresent, no matter
what you do to ignore, dismiss, or erode its guidance and encouragement.

I haven’t a clue what experiences I’m opening up to as I watch this
third path unfurl before me. Recognizing foremost that I’ve denied myself the
ability to see what I’ve always wanted is a start. Recognizing that I’ve
refused to acknowledge that I can have what I want, that my needs don’t have to
be pauperistic, that it is safe in the reality of today to express myself is a
start.

I’ve written many times before about the emerging option of
being safe and seen. Safe doesn’t mean “not bold,” or setting the bar low,
here. It means that I am not going to be punished for wanting what I want this
lifetime.

This is a hard concept for me to integrate. But, more slowly
than I would really love, I’m accepting that the sanest, safest, and surest way toward
fulfillment is actually believing it’s available. Whenever I’m good and ready
to set down the peanut butter and walk toward it.

community · desire · fear · lack · learning · science

Moving the water-cooler.

November 6, 2014 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

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I was at dinner with a friend on Tuesday
night, election night. And she was dispirited by how little she’d gotten to
talk with anyone about the election, the issues, what’s going on in our area.
That it’s just not the water-cooler chatter that’s around her. That there’s a part of her
intelligence that doesn’t feel fueled and fed in the current iteration of her
life.

I replied that I knew precisely how she felt. That there are
conversations I don’t have any more on an intellectual level, not just by being
out of school, but by being out of the groups who talk about topics that make
me think (beyond the emotionally intelligent conversations I can have until the
sun burns out).

I told her there was an informal dinner a friend from grad
school hosts every Wednesday, and how for 2 years now, I continue to get his
weekly invitations. I haven’t gone once.

Well, that’s not true. I went once, with an ex, and he felt
awkward, so it was awkward, and we left. But I have a feeling that dinner’s one
source of the higher conversations I want to have.

Meanwhile, this morning I get a text from a friend saying
it’s her annual birthday party this Saturday. She’s the founder of a non-profit
that provides medical birthing supplies to women in Africa, and has visited
more times than I can count. I can see from my text history that she invited me
last year, and the year before, and I still haven’t gone.

My friend at dinner on Tuesday night challenged me to accept
an invitation to events like these. To go, to meet, to talk, to learn, to be sparked. To
see if there’s a level of conversation I can have beyond my normal scope.

I haven’t wanted to go alone. But that’s usually the best
way to meet people. And so, today, this morning, I replied that I
would be at my friend’s birthday party this weekend.

I can’t attend the Wednesday dinners at the moment because
of rehearsal, but I promised my Tuesday friend I would go after they finish.

It’s not that these opportunities aren’t available. It’s
that I’m scared to go. Scared I can’t keep up. That I don’t know enough. My Tuesday friend told me we both know enough to have *some* kind of a conversation about anything, and she’s right.

There are science lectures I want to attend at Cal. I have wanted to
sit in on classes there for a long time. Maybe it’s different from a party
that’s social, and I’ll want to bring a wingman, someone to discuss it with
afterward or — and here’s my real desire — I’ll meet people there who will want to grab tea afterward and discuss it, our own little study group of lecture-junkies.

I’ve written before about wanting to seek out conversations
and friends and classes that will again spark the kind of thinking I miss
so terribly; that in the absence of such conversation, I begin to feel stagnant
and short of my potential. I know I’ve hemmed and lamented about it
before, but maybe, with this one Yes for this weekend, I’m changing the
direction of my action.

action · authenticity · faith · fear · uncertainty · vulnerability

Someone will be with you shortly.

October 17, 2014 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

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In the absence of more information, we fall back on the
marching orders we know: Chop Wood, Carry Water. The Golden Rule. Look up,
around, and away from yourself.

This morning, in an attempt to cull more information from
the universe about where I should be focusing my energies with regard to career and income, I went into a meditation via a shamanic journey.

I didn’t get much. I asked other questions that I got some
answers or insight to, but as to What on earth should I be doing next, who
should I talk to, where should I focus, I got a whole lot of nothing.

And, in my own experience of meditation, the absence of
information is itself information.

Stop trying to force yourself into a path, into action. It
will be available when it’s supposed to be. The whole, “God is slow but never
late,” adage comes to mind. – One that galls me most of the time.

Because, often in my experience, slow but never late
translates as “the last minute,” which really means, when you’ve given up all your
plans and designs and have thrown your arms down, and said, okay,
god/universe/soul/fate, whatever. Just whatever. I’m here, I’m done. I’m here.

It’s usually in these moments of surrender that I find
information, that opportunities open up, that more is revealed.

Funny, as I think of it now, the play I’m in right now is a
result of that “Whatever, here goes nothing” tack. The second audition of a
day, after I’d pretty badly bombed the first, I decided, Whatever, I’m going to
pull out (most of) the stops, and just throw it all out there, be as funny and
into it as I can be because I have nothing to lose. I tried my controlled, “I
want it to be this way” way, I tried working from the place of true terror and
fear about what others would think of me, and that didn’t work out so great.

So, whatever, god, whatever you want. And lookie-loo what
happened. It’s not to say don’t take action, it’s just to say, let go of my
hold of the way I think things – me, mostly – should be.

And, with regard to other information I got in my meditation
this morning, one of my questions was how I can stop stifling myself onstage?
Because I do. I’m nervous and judging myself, and I want the audience to like
me and my peers to esteem me, and I want to do a “really good job.” And in that
attempt, I’m so in my head that I’m not in my body, in my heart, in the moment, in
the fun. And it doesn’t turn out how I want it.

It seems to me that the answer to most of this is, Be where
you are, be who you are, and let it happen how it is.

That is so hard for me.
And for most people, I imagine.

I want to know what to do next. I want a simple path from A
to B. Or even a map to a complex path – I don’t care, just give me some
coordinates! This, “be where you are and love yourself in and through it” thing
is amorphous and feels ungrounded.

And yet, basing my actions on what I think I should be is as
ungrounded as anything, because it’s not grounded in reality or the truth.

It is obvious to me when I reflect that taking actions out
of fear, out of imagined people-pleasing, out of a panicked desire to “do the
right thing” cause me more harm than good. And take up more time than it’s
worth.

So, I will wait until more is revealed, as people often says
it is. I will remember that there are no mistakes, only misinterpretations. I
will try to embody the … no, I will try to let loose the confidence I know is
stifled beneath the surface of my posturing and planning, and I will see what
comes of it.

This whole transition for me is about embracing and sharing who I really am. It doesn’t work if I keep on
trussing this person up in the shackles of my own expectations and a habit of
low self-image.

Hello, Seattle, I’m listening.