Haven't been writing much, obviously. Haven't wanted to write. Haven't felt to write. Except when I can't write. When I'm in cubicleland or like yesterday, when I was in my car for eleven hours. Then I want to write.
I was in my car for so long because I had a job interview on the other side of the state. Way up in a little town in the NC mountains. A job for a public health educator. A great job with lots of autonomy, lots of interesting things to do. Not enough pay to pay my bills, but with a little holistic work on the side, doable. And health insurance and vacation days and comp time for those weeks that I put in overtime. And all in a town small enough that I could walk to work, walk home for lunch to smooch the fuzzy guys.
But it doesn't really matter. Because I blew the interview.
I could blame it on the fact that I drove several hundred miles in rain and traffic with no cruise control to get to the interview. Or that I haven't interviewed for a public health job in a long time. Or that for some reason I was extra puffy yesterday and so my stretchy, button-down girl-shirt was too tight and I alternated between sucking in my gut and not being able to breathe, and exhaling and watching the belly-fat roll pooch out into the gap. Or that I jinxed it the day before by telling folks in cubicleland that I had a job interview. Or that I simply didn't feel The Love with the folks I interviewed with, although we all expressed seemingly genuine mutual appreciation for one another's experience and talents.
After the hour and a half interview, as I walked in the rain back to my car, feeling rather f*cked and sad, I heard inside my head: This Is The Part Where You Trust. And in that hot second, all doubt was simply gone, and I got into my car, switched back into my casual clothes for the drive back right there in the parking lot, and headed out of town with a light heart.
And although the drive back was hellish, with driving rain and buttheaded drivers cutting me off, and my tailbone for some reason feeling as if it were hot molten lead, and a very stoopid stop-off for dinner at a chinese buffet which means that I ingested both wheat and soy in copious amounts, I got that whatever is going on in my living, I did my part, and the rest is up to Life.
This isn't rosy glasses or magical thinking or trying to make myself feel better with new age platitudes. This is the truth. I did everything right, everything true, everything I could think of and feel and sense and intuit. I did my best. I showed Life my hand. I stopped trying to bluff or bluster, dropped my poker face and just played the cards I was dealt, at the table I sought out, with the folks I felt to play with.
I found a job with a deadline for application two days away, a job that caused my mouth to fall open, and a sound to come out that resembled "whoaaaaaaa". I crafted my resume to fit the job. I wrote a solid cover letter. I did follow up. I was spot on with the phone interview. I spoke to my managers at work, because I needed a couple of hours off the night before to prepare, and also so that they would know where I was going, so that they could give me a reference if I needed a current one. I colored my hair to erase the grey roots, clipped my nails, shaved my underarms and legs for the first time in many many many months. I spent days researching the town's health programs, their demographics and prominent health issues and local industry. Pre-interview, I ate a sensible dinner, a power breakfast, and a light lunch. I drank just enough caffeine to be on the top part of the bell curve. I showed up at the in person interview with hard copies of writing samples of public health initiatives I'd done: a brochure distributed throughout NY to physicians and patients and policy-makers; an evaluation that had been used to justify grant funding for a state-wide initiative; a grad school paper that a prof had tried to get me to seek publishing for in one the environmental health journals he contributed to. I had my reference list, and three really great reference letters. I wore casual clothes for the drive, and changed into interview garb in a fast food restaurant the hour before, where I could also brush my hair and teeth, so that I could arrive at their office looking fresh and uncreased.
But from the moment I sat down in the health department office, it didn't matter. It was utterly Off and nothing I tried could get it to switch back to On. I would watch as things came out of my mouth and were received with a wince or silence or seeming indifference. It was as if I simply couldn't speak their language, and the more I tried to hone in, the more clear it became that I wasn't on their wavelength, and that the disharmony wasn't going to go away. At the point where my nose started running, and I reached into my purse and pulled out a maxipad instead of a tissue, I knew the gig was totally up. And so I relaxed a bit around the funky energy, and just allowed the weirdness to flow without fighting it. And in the relaxing, more of the real me came out, and I said things like "with a template for previous grants you've written, I could create an awesome one for the current project" and "if you need me to start sooner than May 1st, it would be okay, I started packing a few weeks ago as I felt this coming" and chatted them up about the cats and dogs and horses in their lives and spoke to them about my feline "tribe". Of course, all of which only made them look at me more strangely, though they kept saying things like how impressed they were that someone with my credentials and experience would enthusiastically make the long drive to their rural town to come meet with them.
On the long drive back, as my mind clicked and clacked its way down winding pathways, it kept coming back to this: I did my part, and that's all that was required of me. Life takes care of the rest. I felt strongly to do something. And I proceeded with heart and passion and purpose and attention to detail. I did my best. And that's enough. That's all that is required of any of us.
And the point isn't and never was to land the job. It was about the process I went through, how I got out of the way and showed Life my true intention. It's that this series of steps that I just undertook, that I saw through to the end, was about doing as I felt to do, and then releasing the result, not being invested in the outcome.
And I'm not. I'm not invested either way. Get the job, don't get the job, either is fine. I may even get offered the job and not take it, which is also okay, even though by all outward appearances, I am financially f*cked eight ways from Monday.
Because in that moment, walking to my car in the rain, when I heard it, heard "now is the part where you trust", and I did, I immediately, effortlessly surrendered into it, I felt something else reverberate, something Morpheus said about Neo, after Trinity asked: what is he doing? and Morpheus said "he's starting to believe". I took my hand off the tiller, let go of the wheel, knowing without a doubt that something else was driving this bus, this thing I call a life, this personality that goes by various names including Kate and Kat and Kathy and Katherine.
And sure, since that moment of utter clarity, my mind has been tripping, scrambling around looking for things to f*ck with, but it's too late. I let go, and my mind can go suck it. Not in an angry way, or a challenging way, or even a I Am Free Woman Hear Me Roar way. Just a very quiet desire, a pointed choice between me continuing to try and run the show or stepping back to let the highly skilled professional take over. And my mind can whine and screech and cajole and demand and cry all it wants, but its days as the boss of me are over. I'm just going to keep going back to that quiet place, the place that is on to the next thing, that has let go of the last thing, that Does because this is the next thing to Do. Life may bring me cancer or poverty or leave me for the rest of my days in that beige cubicle. Or maybe Life wants me to use the skills I've acquired, the energy I bring into the world, for other things.
As I lay in bed this morning, watching the sun slowly wake up birds and breeze and Baby Wallace, I heard: What Do You Want?
I've been hearing this same phrase for about five years now, ever since I lived on that mountain in Virginia, when I had found a cave made of greenery, in the middle of a stand of trees and bushes and flowers and vines, when I was lying on my back, looking up at the blue sky peeking in amongst the green, and I heard a clear voice ask: What Do You Want? And the question was startling, deeply so, because for so long my stock answer has been: Life, whatever you want, I want, too.
But now, five or so years later, I understand that I'm at some sort of crossroads, where I line up my intentions with Life's intentions, that they have never been separated, except in my mind, and that now is the time to realize their alignment. And even as I've gotten better at stating to Life what I want, at this time, in my living, the rubber and the road must seriously get their sh*t in tandem.
And so I lay in bed this morning, welcoming the day's offerings, the scent of Wallace's fur, the caws and tweets and warbles of the bird community, the feel of the cool breeze on the arm that reached outside the blanket to hold on to Wallace's twitchy tail as he watched the birds and sniffed the breeze.
I rummaged around inside my heart for: what do I want? And I saw a picture of a farm, and all the tools were rusting, the fences falling apart, the gardens in disarray, holes in the roof. And I got that I was the farmer, and I've been sick for a really long time, sick in body, mind, spirit, too sick to tend to the farm. And that these afflictions aren't my fault, no one is to blame, they are just part of Life waking me up. And that if Life wants me to die sooner rather than later, I'm okay with that. But if Life wants me to live, I'm at the turning point where continued neglect of the farm means that it'll be past the point of no return, will be too far gone to be anything but razed, and I'd like to get the farm going again, love to see it full of happy animals and luscious sunshine and fat tomatoes on the vine.
So, yeah, I want the farm. If Life brings me cancer and ruin and continued arid winds, I'll surrender into each and every one of them. I won't choose them, set my intention toward them, but I trust Life enough to embrace them with humor and a supple spine.
But my choice is definitely the farm. I want the vibrant farm. Definitely, definitely the farm . . .
