It’s so fun getting lost and really scared and then finding your way back and everything turning out okay. That’s the way it has all been going so far. I walked miles last night looking for my car and it was freezing cold. I was so happy to find it.
I loaded up the motel 6 app and headed north on the PAC 1 with the glowing sun setting in my face pretty much all the way. I’m not a motel 6 snob. They are great, clean modern, very well run, cheep and almost always available. I just push the book room icon on the app and I’ve got a room. It takes a few minutes to check in. I park my car right outside my door. So affordable it sets you free.
I’m getting really strong from carrying my bags in and out of my car everyday. I couldn’t be having more fun. This morning I wandered and walked around Monterey and I got incredibly lost. I got stuck on the wrong side of some never ending river. I felt scared for about five minutes thinking I was never going to find my way back but of course I did. I wasn’t in a rush, it was beautiful. I was listening to John Mayer, If I Ever Get Around To Living on my phone. Feels like I am.
As I was lost walking or wandering, I remembered a road trip I took about four years ago and how I heard something that really impacted me as a writer that I didn’t think important at the time. You see, I had always yearned to be a writer but I just didn’t think I qualified. I asked my grandfather, my spirit guide, what was I supposed to do? He’d always show me a hand writing, so I thought he was telling me to journal to find out. Well, after years of journalling I figured out he was trying to tell me that I was a writer. Not because something outside in the world qualified me but because I loved it. That qualified me.
After that I wondered what in the world should I write about? I was pretty blocked for a few years until that road trip. I drove up to the Canadian boarder and stopped in on a writers retreat and stayed a couple of days. I mostly goofed off and didn’t pay much attention but I did end up learning something that set me free.
On the last evening, the group of writers that had come from far away eager to gain some wisdom from the host, a successful award winning writer, gathered on a deck deep in a northern forest. Everyone, except for me, who didn’t write one word, shared their work. Afterwards the host stood forward and said something that echoes in my mind still to this day. Something that had I not heard I am not so sure I would be writing. He told the group, more like pleaded to the group of fellow writers, “to please, please, reveal yourselves”.
That struck me pretty strong. I could tell he really meant it and he is a well respected writer. I believed him. I was thinking really? You mean, people want that? I realized at that moment I had always felt too embarrassed or too shy to really open up and to start writing the way I want to. I did want to reveal myself, but too afraid I would be judged. When I heard those words I was given the permission to be a free writer, something I craved. To write about a truth, about what is going on deeper because we can all see what is going on on the surface. It woke me up to my reason to write. I know that road trip was fated and supposed to happen because it changed me deeply.
I could write all day but my butt hurts. I gotta go roam around and wander some more and get some more road trip wisdom. May you love your day.
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