Ambition

Lovelies,

I am very driven.

I love the ache of striving. Of solving. Of alchemizing from ideas of ideals the crude, shining, tangible stuff of creativity.

But 6 months ago something happened. It's not that I was stopped in my tracks. I won't be that histrionic about it. But I was compelled, STRONGLY compelled, by a power somehow greater than my drive, to pursue another interest: wellbeing.

What a disappointment! My days felt less satisfying, less REAL, for lacking the artifacts of choruses, paragraphs, horn arrangements. I had to perform the Jedi mind trick of my lifetime: believing that wellbeing is my truest work.

That every artistic flourish of my dreams waits for me on the other side of it.

Today I count in my little blue notebook (my log of this deep sea journey) 33 discoveries. And I do not define discovery lightly! Each one of these starred entries shook my body and reconstituted my mind.

And behold, approximately 3 of them were about DRIVENNESS, itself. I realized that creativity has given me so much: Purpose, Connection, Service, Access. But something I always thought it gave me, PEACE, it did not. Peace (meaning, really, safety, but bear with me) is not located at the beginning, middle, or end of a creative project. Peace I finally located somewhere else: A clearing at midnight, mid-January, Great Pond Woods coastal Maine, in snow shoes and headlamps with my most sweet and mountaineering friend, at least 2 miles past the end of any path. The frozen lake, the frozen ground, the frozen trees, the still air, and the dusty stars each emitting a different interpretation of silence. Obligations, fascinations, relationships, objections turned to icy memory.

Now that I'd tasted peace, my drive felt dislocated. Misguided. High key harmful. I wondered if I'd return to it in any fashion. I wondered if I'd even still be able to work hard!

Unbelievably: I doubted I'd care.

A couple weeks ago it stirred in me. Whoa! Still there! She looks a little different. More relaxed. Ruddier cheeks. Turns out she's relieved I'm no longer looking to her for the things she could never give me. She's that much more juiced to give me the things she can.

And on January 2nd, when the world pulsed to life with project updates, requests for collaboration, a dozen "circling back" emails, I felt my own ambitious heart pulsing right along with it.

Happy new year!

Rachel