Visions

 I have a vision that I'm really clear on.

I've had a few visions like these in my life: of being a mother, of becoming a teacher, of surviving cancer, of getting divorced. The vision is always a little fuzzy the way that dreams are always a little confusing, but the messages are clear. I must. I will. It feels like fate, like truth, like inevitability.

And I'm having a vision of being a writer.

My whole life, I thought I was doing everything wrong and that everyone except me had it figured out. I still feel like that most of the time. I keep returning back to the Mary Oliver line, ruminating after a day spent in the fields admiring nature, "Tell me, what else is should I have done?" Oliver is right. It was her destiny to stare at grasshoppers, not because to do so is delightful or restful or something, but because only she could capture it so perfectly that the first time I read her words tears sprang into my eyes, a mixture of gratitude for beauty and the clean pain of a wound that is healing.

I do not fit into the vision that the world creates for me every day.

I don't want to wear sexy high heels and bandage dresses and prove to anyone that I am sexy.

I don't want to be a teacher who grades until 2am because that is what she thinks dedication looks like.

I don't want to spend my Saturdays scrubbing out my house of every speck of dust.

I do not want to be with people who look like they belong in magazines, doing the right things and listening to the right music.

I want to stare out my front window, watching the birds in the bird feeder, playing with phrases in my mind. Might. Light. Nightlight. Mightlight. Might? Right? Rightmight? Might. Light.

I want to read books that I love, not books I'm supposed to love.

I want to play board games with my friends, and I want them to leave by 10pm because I'm tired and done at that hour, no matter how I might wish otherwise.

It is my destiny - as it is all of our destinies - to be myself. I'm still figuring that out, but I think - no, I know - that I'm supposed to be a writer.

I do best in fits and starts. I am not good at focusing for eight hours, twelve hours, grinding it out. I keep listening to Writer's Routine podcasts and I'm startled to hear real writers - successful writers, published writers, writers who make their living writing actual books! - say things like "I only have about two hours of productive writing in me each day." Now, of course there are a handful who write around the clock, but honestly, they sound relatively unhappy and obsessive (and like what I fear I have to be in order to be successful). No, so many of them say things like "I get up and walk the dog, and then I have a cup of tea, and then I dink around on the internet a bit, and then I am filled with self loathing for all I haven't done and then around 10am I finally kick into gear and write like mad until I'm hungry and have to stop for lunch" and the like.

In short, they are doing their thing and being good at it and accomplishing more than enough and making a living by BEHAVING THE WAY I ALWAYS FEARED WAS MY WEAKNESS.

When I work hard, I'm so "on" but I work in flashes. I burn bright and words tumble out of me and my mind is clear and sharp (even when it's messy) and then...it stops. When it stops I have always thought that meant that I was bereft of talent or enough desire or that I was broken in some way. And yet - here these real writers are, and the way they write is... the same way I write?

Some of them say things like "I'm done by noon, and then I walk the dog again and go to the shops and meet a friend and go to the gym..." and I think, "This is a version of life? Not because of sloth or lack, but because it is right and true?" Of course, many of these same folks also fight deadlines, and then they put in their long days and cancel engagements, and burn bright and long and tired...

Which is exactly how I have always done it.

I am not insane for the vision of the life that I have. Others are already living that life - ordinary people who found a way to be true to themselves, to tell their stories.

My vision is that I carve out this way of being for myself. That I stop running wild and anxious for what I haven't accomplished, and that I trust the process that I will do enough, that I will meet the deadline. That I can create a life with time to walk the dog, to be creative, to make my way with words, and to be enough.

My vision:

I write in the mornings. In the afternoons, I exercise, run errands, do podcasts, read, go to museums, connect with friends, volunteer at the food bank. I have time to make interesting healthy meals. I have time to date. I make more than "enough" and I have some ease (though not luxury). Sometimes I teach a semester or a quarter. Occasionally I substitute teach. Every few years I go on a book tour.

I believe in this. I know it's true. It's not a fantasy anymore, because I see it so clearly, in a way that I've seen only a handful of things in my life.

I'm not done teaching. Every day I teach, I learn. Every bit of it matters to me, and I'm proud of it. It will come to a natural end, and I hope that I neither leave it too soon nor too late.

The timeline isn't clear - this is a dreamlike state, but the vision, the feeling of the dream, is certain.

I'm ready to write, and the world is ready to read what I have to say.