Field notes from a recovering Type A

Hello Reader,

I woke up this morning with the urge to get going. Most mornings feel like this. I’m a Type A who doesn’t need an alarm. I pop up and out of bed like an Olympian pole vaulter.

I hear the usual voice, the one that feels like parents in the 1990s scrambling for Cabbage Patch Dolls in the pre-Christmas FAO Schwarz mania in Manhattan (I did end up getting one). “Let’s fucking go.”

A feeling of scarcity. If I don’t get started, then I won’t get whatever it is I might be after. God knows where I picked this belief up. I’ve been holding it like an empty glass at a party with no table in sight. Time to put it down.

An intentionally slow morning routine helps. I wake up, meditate for 30 minutes, then journal, what Julia Cameron of The Artist’s Way calls morning pages.

I’m training myself to do it differently on the regular.

Shift happens slowly and deliberately.

On most mornings, that pushy voice tries to tell me to skip the pages, which can take around 45 minutes. It gave up on meditation. I don’t hear a peep when I sit on my buckwheat hull-filled cushion. But since the pages fluctuate, it still tries to get me to drop writing and check my email instead.

I’m glad I don’t listen because meeting myself in this way on most days creates space for random thoughts and emotions to unfurl like a sheet.

In the pages of my Composition Notebook, I realize I don’t need anxiety to drive my audiobook launch this summer.

I’m nervous about it. This means something to me. I wrote Welcome to the Creative Club to impact someone’s life, and I find those people by promoting it. It’s not enough to create it. The creation process might feel like a labor of love, but we’ve got to push it out into the world.

This push creates pressure. Fear screeches, “This is your last chance to promote the book with something new. You better get it right.” Then my panties twist, my skin chafes, and fight mode gets activated.

An old panicky feeling arises in the body - “I have to or else.” Or else what? Do or die? I won’t survive? Fear reaches up and squeezes my heart like a stress ball, ventricles popping.

But it doesn’t have to be this way because I’m the one making it this way (no one else). At some point, I picked this belief up, probably from a parent, but I can put it down.

I can trust it will be whatever it is meant to be and approach it with playful ease. In other words, I can make it fun, co-host a launch party, find creative ways to share the audio, and move toward what feels warm and tingly.

While journaling this morning, I realized the idea "I have to get the plan done before I leave for Bali", and once I’m there, I'm only allowed to relax, had lodged in my throat like a bone, choking me.

I'm the one making strict rules for how it should be - deciding that Bali should be no work, just Monkey Palace, and the launch needs to be stressful and full on to be a success.

That fearful part of me tells the story of how pressure and agitation helped me move forward and succeed in life, to which I call hot, steaming bullshit.

I succeeded despite it, not because of it.

I'll create evidence that I succeed when I embody the energy of love, trust, and play, and bring no hard and fast rules about how I need to it.

Otherwise, play becomes part of the old game. I’d tell myself I need to play to win, when I’m playing to enjoy my process, creating, and life. Then, no matter what happens, I’ve already won.

I didn’t realize I set these rules until I wrote my pages.

Then, I could see it, the belief standing there, exposed and ridiculous, wearing a t-shirt with three wolves howling at the moon, white tube socks, and tighty whiteys.

The launch or Bali doesn’t have to be any particular way.

I get to choose.

I don’t have to be a hot, anxious mess trying to keep a plan that a scared part of me concocted and kept on the down low.

This realization feels like Savasana. Deep exhale and a full release.

We’re the ones creating our experiences.

But we need to know which part of us is in the director’s chair.

The most valuable thing I could do today was sit with myself.

For me, this looked like writing, just letting thoughts, ideas, and feelings pour out of me. It’s how I discovered the empty lipstick-stained martini glass I was holding.

It helped me become aware of the feeling and what was behind it, seeing the little man behind the curtain. This awareness gave me a choice: do it the old way, rushing, pushing, trying to control, or design a new one, moving with playful ease, trust, and freedom.

The choice became obvious.

I redirect my energy and change the shape of my experience. I’ll have to do it more than once. But today’s a start.

I see the pink granite side table that’s been here all along, put the glass down, and waltz into the next room, my yellow striped silk kaftan and scent of salt, moss, and musk trailing behind me.

You get to choose too.

Keep creating,