Tag Archives: hiking

The Disease of Wanting More

It’s been a doosy of a ride lately. For a while here, I was updating almost every day with some sort of artistic inspiration for all you peeps who read this blog. Lately, I’ve been putting my nose to the grindstone to keep on the path I set in motion years ago. I haven’t had much to say. I’ve been focusing on filling the empty spaces inside with music, writing, work and taking care of basic duties.

Years ago, lonely, living on the hill in El Cerrito, I dreamed of a day when I would have sober musicians and writers to talk and hang out with. I’m officially in Oakland again. It’s cool, I’m close to a lot of things now: clubs, coffee shops, new people I’m growing to like, artists, writers, musicians. We all seem to orbit in our own little circles, coming together at random intervals to compare notes.

I seem to have manifested a little seed of this, but I’m still yearning for more. I struggle with the disease of more. If I get some attention, I want more attention. If I get a show booked and it goes well, I want another show. If someone offers me some company, I want more company.

Because people can only do so much, I’m learning to give myself what I need. I’ve had to focus on meditation, journaling, prayer and helping others to get me through these rough times. I’ve had a few people approach me with confessions about their drug and alcohol use, as they notice I’m still sober and going strong, focusing on making sure I keep my sobriety as the center stone of my new life.

It’s crazy, because I always wanted only one thing: to be liked. I wanted people to notice me and pay attention to me, because I often felt growing up that I was invisible, and no one could notice my special powers.

I still have a hard time motivating myself to keep progressing in the world of music and writing, even though I keep taking forward steps. I’m fearful of success, whatever that means, and because I care about life and people and the present moment, I don’t want to fall into the American trap of putting work and career in front of everything else. I don’t want to grow old and look back and realize I never enjoyed hiking with friends, sharing my music one on one, helping others develop their art, or essentially enjoying the life I have been given.

Today, I was hiking up a large hill, as I am prone to do, and I had my music playing on my iPhone. One of my songs came on, one I had forgotten about, called “We’re Lost.” As I came down a giant hill, I saw the entire Bay Area spread out below me, with San Francisco in the distance. The water was ripply and sparkling blue.

I tried to capture it in a picture, but just couldn’t.

I felt happy, listening to something I had created, looking at the area I’ve lived in most of my life. I was alone, but I didn’t feel alone. I felt like I had my own company. I appreciated something I’d made, and I appreciated the ground I was standing on. Feeling whole for the moment, I thought to myself, “If I died right now, I would be happy, because I created these songs and I hiked these hills.”

Happiness is fickle and hard to define. It seems I am always looking for it, over that bend, around that corner. But when I stop to feel this body I’ve been given, to appreciate the every day gifts of this world I live in, to listen to the voice and the music I’ve been able to create, I know that there’s something there. It’s something I cannot quantify, or really explain, but it’s powerful and real.

I’m always wishing for more, for that future date when I will have arrived, when people will finally notice my strengths and my beauty and my power. But what I forget is that it comes from within, this recognition. It’s something only I can give myself. And if I don’t believe it, no matter how many people tell me I’m awesome, I won’t feel it.

Life is a struggle. Life is pain.

But life is also joy. And joy is found in the moment, joy is something that lands on your shoulder once in a while.

As I descended the hill, I saw a guy doing a photo shoot with a chick who had high heels on and a tattoo on her leg. As I rounded the bend, a monarch butterfly flew up into my view and drifted away. After I hiked, I took my guitar over to a patch of grass and practiced my set for tonight’s show.

People walking by seemed confused. Why the hell is this girl playing her guitar and singing on the grass, their faces said. Few of them smiled: it’s a wealthy area, where I was sitting, and everyone is busy heading somewhere else.

I sat in the middle of their orbits, watching them pass, practicing away. People may never really stay in my orbit. They come and go. I’m here, eternally me, eternally alone behind a skin and mind barrier. I don’t know what that means, only that I am doing things for me, and I only hope that if I was given gifts to share, I can continue to hone and share them. I only wish to express what it means to be alive, how we all cross paths at different speeds, in our own time frames.

I don’t know what to hold on to, or what exactly means anything, only that I’ve got a pull towards art, always, and it’s what I do to fill the empty spaces. And I’ll be damned if I don’t enjoy this little unpredictable life I’ve been given. Sometimes, when I look back, it’s at the worst times, that I had the best times. Sometimes, when I look back, I find that the path was right here all along.

Life Goes On

Whatever you are going through, even if it’s threatening to rip out the foundation you stand on, life continues to move.

People keep working and talking and eating and sleeping. The only thing that matters in a bubble is you, and what you think of your own situation. Other people can be road maps or beacons along the way, they can point you in the right (or wrong) direction, but when it comes down to it, we have ourselves and maybe something outside of ourselves, too, call it nature or god or the universe. Or maybe you don’t believe in that, you think we were formed for no reason and are hurtling towards nothing. I’ve felt that at times. But when shit gets rough, I need to believe in something.

As creative people, we need space. We need time to breathe, think and be alone. Yesterday was rough. I’m still trying to figure out where/how to live on my own once our lease is up in this apartment in July. I am totally going to miss having space. In this situation, I will find perhaps that I am in the opposite situation—crammed into a space with other roommates I don’t know, trying to navigate being around more than one person every day and night for the first time in ten years.

There’s a part of me that just wants to pack up all of my stuff and hit the road. There’s a wanderlust I’ve had since I was little, the feeling of already having lost it all or let it go—every time I left home, my parents would throw away all of my things. When I hit the road, I had only what was on my back. I often lost that when getting shipped back, too. I learned to lose things.

In the last ten years, I’ve become anchored to my stuff. When I lived in my grandparents house, I realized that all the stuff they’d collected during their 80+ years of life now meant nothing to anyone. It was just taking up space in the house we were trying to live in. As I packed it all up, I came to the conclusion that too much stuff is a burden. I got rid of a lot of my stuff after I moved, mostly because it had been rotted with mold, but also because I was just tired of shlepping stuff around everywhere.

The biggest anxiety I’m having right now is where I’m going to keep my musical instruments and computer. In order to save enough money to find a place of my own, I’m going to have to sublet, sleep on couches and pack light. It’s probably going to suck. I’m not going to have space like I want it, for a while.  I said I would talk about autonomy, and whether or not it’s something we can all have at once in this society. Maybe this ties into that.

I had a thought the other day, about how so many people come into the library starved of resources. No place to live or sleep, no food to eat, no family resources or friends. They are horrified often when they find they can only use the computers for an hour. And I wondered the other day if it would be possible–as I was driving through West Oakland, taking in the graffiti and disheveled people leaning against houses and buildings, aimlessly wandering–for all of us to have a space of our own, health care, a job in society that made us feel we were included.

Is it possible for us all to have a space? Or in order for society to function, do we need to continue splitting things between the rich and throwing scraps to the poor here and there while the middle class shrivels up altogether, barely getting by until they just can’t anymore.

I tell you what. I don’t see a huge difference between me and the people wandering on the streets. The biggest difference I find it that I am holding on to this part-time library job and the freelance assignments I cobble together. But soon, I will be drifting, too.

When I was 21, I had a real job in San Francisco. I had lived in the tenderloin in a piss in the sink hotel where you paid by the week. I had lost my $800 a month space in the sober living house (crammed in a room with five other girls) out near San Francisco State due to having some beers at a party. I found a room in between Hayes and Fell, a big spacious room with a hardwood floor, for $800 a month. Since I earned about $1800, I didn’t think that was a big deal. I had no car, I had no expenses, really—I lived on crackers and TV dinners and sardines in a can. I had no insurance, no instruments that worked. I had a tiny little computer and some furniture I’d had since I was a child stored away in my parents rented house out in the ‘burbs.

I was excited to have my own room. I shared a bathroom at the end of a long hall with three other people. I filled my room with movies and bought my first TV with a VCR.

The excitement of having my own room wore off rather quick…

I was lonely.

My ex popped back into my life. I remembered how much I loved him, how he was my best friend. He found me a place, and the landlady said she would only rent it to use if we moved in together. So we did. We married a year later and lived together until now…

He put down a deposit on his own place yesterday. I hiked to the top of a giant hill and smoked a cigarette. It tasted like shit. I called a friend who used to sponsor me in AA about 9 years ago and told her I was sitting on top of a hill smoking a cigarette for the first time in two years. You aren’t smoking if you don’t smoke another one after this and you leave that pack where it is, she said. Don’t you sing, she said? And aren’t cigarettes a million bucks now? Imagine how much you can buy instead if you don’t continue smoking. Remember how hard it was to quit? You could buy a pair of boots with all the money you’d save from not smoking.

She made me laugh. I left the pack on the bench and dragged my dog the rest of the way through the hike. The view of San Francisco and the entire Bay Area was to die for. It felt good to hike.

I don’t know how things will work out. It’s hard to just get through each day as it comes. I feel like all my happy endorphins have been wiped away. I just want a room of my own where I can write like a motherfucker and get it all out.

I pray I get it.

Dear Blog…

Hello little blog.

I’m sorry I’ve neglected you. I’ve been busy doing all sorts of non-writing things, like hiking and apprenticing at a community supported kitchen and freelance work…

I know that you’re supposed to be a record of all my creative endeavors, yet I find myself not posting about all the crazy things that happen in my life. It’s so easy to turn that raccoon outside into an epic story about predators in the yard, yet here I am, writing you another Dear Jon letter at midnight, when my brain doesn’t even have a chance to do a good story justice.

I could promise to get up at 6am every morning and write hilarious tales until it’s time to go about my “real” day, but yet, I don’t.

So I’m going to promise you nothing right now. Just know that I’m full of ideas, I just can’t find the rip cord to access them right now.

I will. Just you wait.

Love,
The Stifled Artist

Wake Up Early, for a Change.

I woke up at 8:30am this morning.

This may not seem like a big deal. But since the topic of the month for blogging is change, this is a huge deal.

Change at it’s finest.

I usually get up much, much later.

Rising early has it’s benefits. More time to waste. Hot coffee as opposed to cold. More opportunities of things to do with my day.

Yesterday I actually did go hiking.

Today, I’ve been reading articles on joblessness, insanely high insurance prices for the uninsured, and what a certain blogger thinks jobs should be about.

Waking up early means more sunshine. More options. A nap later on if I’m so inclined.

Other than that, waking up is just that. Getting out of bed. Slurping some coffee. Sitting on the back porch watching the fat squirrels struggle to get their lazy butts up the barren trees in the backyard and the small finches leaping delicately from branch to branch.

I’ve been working on growing into change. Accepting what is. Not keeping myself a prisoner because of the outside circumstances of my life I have no control over. Enjoying this time, because someday I’m going to look back and slap my hand to my forehead and say, why didn’t I enjoy that time off?

I do this for the future me. The one that’s going to demand of me why I squandered my time. I’ll be able to say that I spent it all according to plan. I accepted what was and I relaxed into the present. I let the river of time change me into a smoother rock.

And future me will say, thank god. At least you didn’t give up, or stagnate, or spend your days depressed and forlorn.

Yes, I am not interested in money any more than it gets me shelter and food and some books and savings. So there isn’t a lot I will sacrifice my time for. It has to be just right. So all these entry-level “dirge” jobs can just wait for other new college grads to fill them up. Been there, done that.

We are so much more than what we do for green pieces of paper. Our identity is not cast off in ATM reflections. We have things to barter and trade and give. The least of us, so it seems, have much to give.

So if you feel you have nothing, or can’t keep up, look at how much you have that that man sitting on the sidewalk in front of the coffee shop doesn’t. You can share a smile or a penny or a cup of tea. Granted, you probably have friends and family, some pets. Some things you want to do before you die. While you’re unemployed, like so much of the work force is now, let’s do something about that.

Get out your pen and paper, hike up to a bench on the top of a hill, sit down and write. Plug in your amp and your guitar and thrash the windowpanes with wattage. Scream out your lungs. Write that screenplay. Watch those movies. Read those books. Run that marathon. These aren’t things you can only learn by working 9-5 for what someone else needs.

Your agenda should pertain to your own life, not paying the dues of a corporate ladder that has missing rungs, tilts against a different wall every few months, and isn’t maintained by any organization.

If all I can do is wake up at 8:30 am instead of noon, that’s a change for me. That’s a couple extra hours to ponder my navel. To sit and accept that we are all nothing. And nothing, is everything.