15 de Julio.
[A Stream of Consciousness Essay.]
I have some exciting news. I am going to Prague! I am so excited to go and be with my friend at this camp I’ve paid for, but I’m also excited about the spiritual lessons getting there is going to teach me. I’m not exactly clear on the rules about this manifestation thing but I hope that this counts as “putting it out into the universe.”
To get there, I am going to raise $3,000. I’m very excited at how possible this is, I am keeping my mind open and my inner ear tuned to the quiet whispers of my intuition because I know that my mind is powerful and highly creative and now that I have a need to make the money I will make the money. I’m incredibly grateful to writers like Robert T Kiyosaki and Jen Cisneros for teaching me these things. For showing me how important it is for me to watch my mouth and catch the initial thoughts I have about what I think is possible. Because that boundary of what I think is possible and impossible is really up to me. As soon as I say that I can’t do something, then I stop looking for options as to how to achieve it and I shut down.
For this next week, I will and do have incredible faith that $3,000.00 is coming to me. I’m so overjoyed at how lucky I am that this is happening and I’m excited at the opportunity to work hard for it. Already as I’m saying this more and more work opportunities are coming to me. I have a healthy relationship with my bank account and know how much is in there and check it an appropriate amount.
I’m so excited to be part of an international community again, if only for 2 weeks. I’m so excited to see a new country, and really experience something so different than I ever have before. I’m really excited because I feel like this was meant to happen in the way that it aligned, and I am surrendering to the faith that I will go. That all my bills will be paid when I do go, and that I will be fine. I’m so grateful to the times when I’ve had freakouts over money because they’ve taught me how unhelpful that is. Be calm, quiet your mind, and let it come to you. “Let go, and let god” as they say.l
I’m so grateful for my good friend who is there waiting for me and all the great experiences we are going to have together. We are going to have great conversations. We are going to hike and play chess and do other things I don’t even know yet. I’m so grateful for this coffee shop as a place to stay and do my work. Thank you for the money that flows to me freely and easily so that I can buy the coffee, food, and tip the barista that I need to. Thank you for my work and the fact that it is fun, thank you for the fact that I have friends there, thank you for this beautiful warm weather, thank you for all the gifts you constantly give me.
Last night I got home from work, had done my nighttime ritual and was sipping some herbal tea in my PJ’s and reading about Alchemy when Michael Knocked on the door. He said we could try and bring the drum set up to my room tonight if we cleaned it. I really thought about saying “fuck it” but I didn’t and we took that thing apart, scrubbed the rust off the rims, ground the rust off the bolts and polished the shells, put it back together and tuned it. By that time it was 6 am.
At time’s it was frustrating because he can be an antagonist and say things to get under my skin but I do know that he’s just playing and trying to get a little attention. I noticed how quiet I get around him and would like to be more myself around him and everyone else. I’d like to be myself even when I’m by myself. Walk with my shoulders back, look people and myself in the eye, that sort of thing. But that’s happening now, I’m becoming more and more of myself every day. Doing things that make me proud of myself. Like sticking to projects that I start until they are done.
I had a worry that these daily essays were maybe distracting me from the series I’m doing “This Was A Terrible Idea”, maybe you’ve seen it. But then I thought that this style of writing is just a slightly more presentable version of the free writing I do while I’m trying to work my way through the story, so I think if anything, this is going to help. It’s an experiment anyway and I tend to admire the kinds of people who make experiments out of there lives, who try new things and make measurable changes in their lives, and I really do feel in my gut that sticking to this is going to help everything. At the very least it forces me to put some piece of writing out into the world every single day. And it forces me not to be a perfectionist, to realize that ‘perfect is better than done.’
Speaking of perfect, I had this weird thought that took ahold of me yesterday for a few hours during work. It was a though of despair that I couldn’t be “the best” at something. It was a pretty vain thought now that I’m thinking back on it but I want to bring it to the light here. I was getting very worried that my life might be mediocre, that I’ll only ever be an “Okay” writer or an “Okay” artist or musician. That I didn’t have the time to make myself into a great one.
Looking back on that I realize that that is just fucking poppycock. That I am working hard every day to become a better storyteller, musician, artists, and entrepreneur. And what’s more than that is I have thrown my need to know exactly what I’m doing to the wind and am now just focusing on the step that is directly in front of me. And in doing that, I’m working hard and improving by doing. I’m working a lot, reading a lot, working out a lot, writing a lot, making music a lot, and I go out once or twice a week. On top of that, I picked up and moved across the entire fucking country. I am doing really amazing with myself, and I should be proud. And I am proud. I mean look at me now. I stayed up until 6 am, got a few hours of sleep, and what’s the first thing I get up and do? I get up and make a blog post.
Even though writing here in this way is for me, I also hope it can be for you too. I hope that in seeing my thinking style in real time, basically unedited, that you can identify with me and stick with your journey too. If anyone ever reads these that is. If not that’s great too because I like the freedom to be weird as fuck here and not need to make any sense.
But yes, I am doing fucking great. I’m highly ambitious and if I’m feeling lost, scared, or like I don’t know what I’m doing, that’s because of my personality trait to constantly put myself in situations outside of my comfort zone. And I love that about myself. All this confusion and feeling stuck is just a part of the process and so for that, I should be happy and just get back to work. I think it really is that simple. I’m going to constantly keep checking in on my goals and make sure I’m working in the right direction, but I’ve spent enough time in my head trying to “figure it out” that I know that that doesn’t really work. Reflection is powerful, but trying to create fate in your mind is not the same thing as reflection. That’s trying to force things. So much better to stick to the very specific task in front of you and trust the flow of the universe that good things are coming to you.
This Alchemy book that my friend gave me is really exciting to read. It’s one of the missing pieces I’ve been waiting for to complete that novel I shelved my sophomore year of college. I didn’t know how many symbols and ideas I was playing with were rooted in alchemy, especially because of my interest in William Blake and Dante. Now that I’ve gone to Spain and have taken a more serious interest in my Latin and Spanish roots, that is only going to reinforce what this story was always about and make it richer, a more authentic version of what it already was. Kind of like the alchemical process.
It’s really exciting, visiting these ideas again with the wisdom of a few more years behind me. I know I still need to wait a little longer and complete the road trip story before I start, but that’s fine. It feels like I’ve put the novel in the crockpot and have been letting it stir in its own juices for years, enriching the flavor.
When it is written, it is going to be weird. So unique and strange and wild that it could have come from only me, and I’m so excited about that. I can see those wild cinematic images of it and I’m stoked to write the screenplay to. I am stoked on the freedom to get absurd in my themes and expression while being strict and traditional in my story structure. That seems like the way I want to do it. Why would I try to reinvent the wheel when all stories end up being the same anyway? Might as well rock out to what I can’t avoid and use it to be my most original in the way that I tell the story.
Before, the novel was not about being biracial and colonialism, but looking back on it now, there are small hints to it that I had no idea. The fact that the Malebranche have been alive since 1492 is so perfect for me that I can’t even begin to describe all the ways that this makes the story come together. The fact that I can play with witches and wizards and alchemy without needing to mention any of that inspiration, just let the power of these deeply laid universal symbols do what they always do in the story is so exciting to me. Because I get the best of both worlds. I get the power of tradition, and I get my own original idea at the same time.
This has been fun, just sitting here and writing and I’m happy that I might actually have found what I love to do.
