I don’t know what it is about the words ROAD TRIP … but it sure gets the juices flowing—even when it would seem there’s no juice left. Frankly at the moment I feel a lot like one of those pithy green limes that keep showing up in the grocery stores nowadays. You know the ones. No juice, just dry limey-green interiors with a little dribble of lime taste to them. That’s me!
Somehow I forgot that the creative process is an inhale exhale process – a journey with two beats to it … like my heart. START/GO and FINISH/PAUSE.
I got so wound up in the GO process I forgot to stop and take a breath. Writing a book is a crazy obsessive thing for me … up at 4 am, wide awake with ideas seeping from every pore. Can’t wait to get to the computer where I find myself 6-8-10- hours later in a daze with pages written and a satisfied feeling that can’t be beat. Then up to do the same the next day.
Not so fun is editing … but still rewarding. Then comes marketing once the book finds a publisher and then it’s the RACE TO THE LAUNCH DAY. And then it’s talks and interviews and travel and excitement and and and … all wonderful. And all very draining. Two and a half years of draining.
Which is why the road trip. I could have flown to my destinations in California and New Mexico where I’m doing a few talks. But why? This has been a looooong dreary winter in the Pacific NW with record rainfall. It’s spring. And the desert with its vast empty spaces and wide skies call.
So I’m taking my pithy lime-green self to go lay down on the desert sands and soak up a looong hit of LIFE … it is, after all, an exercise I actually recommend in my book. (Not the laying down on the desert sands stuff. Just the STOPPING part.)
Continuing to race like a crazy person … to push and push and not pause is just my ego driving me – telling me that what I’m doing is so important it can’t wait. That I can’t rest. That I can’t pause. Really?
Ha!
Watch me!