hockey, dextromethorphan, and the bliss of doing nothing

I’ve been really sick all week. The fever broke last night, I think, and my brain sort of works today, but the week has been a joyful mist of woozy illness combined with good extra-strength cold and flu meds. Feverish, stoned, and blessed with holiday hockey to watch.

It could have been worse.

One of the un-joys of casinos is that there’s tons of money passing through our hands and, with it, a million germs. New employees to casinos, or old employees coming back, tend to not have a sufficiently robust immune system to handle the microbe overload. After my Boxing Day shift last week, functioning on four hours of sleep after a late shift on the 25^th, I came home and succumbed to some serious sneezing.

In between prolonged sleeps and supplemental napping I’ve enjoyed house sitting at a friend’s place and taking advantage of her television, something I usually avoid like the plague. But during the holiday week there’s some fabulous tournament hockey to watch – both the IIHF World Juniors and the Spengler Cup in Europe.

If I had to be sick, I picked a good week.

One might think that it would have been a good week to write some really psychedelic stuff, but I was having a hard enough time focusing on the TV and following the puck. I have a feeling that “Dick and Jane” prose would have been a challenge. So I took the week off, postponing a freelance contract until after the New Year and not even cracking the manuscript. I played utter and complete hooky.

And I barely even felt bad about it.

I read blogs his week (occasionally feeling brave enough to try to comment in English), many of which were following the standard New Years motif of goal setting and resolution making. Many were well-written and yet did not stir me. Two did though, mostly because they bucked the resolution trend: Judy Clement Wall posted a beauty at Zebra Sounds about creating a personal manifesto, and Giulietta Nardone notched a lovely piece at Giulietta the Muse about following your enthusiasm. Please, check them both out - you won't be sorry.

Both, to me, were about defining who we are and then being it or chasing that ideal as opposed to setting external goals and measuring worth according to whether we achieve the goal or not.

The inversion has been all about not setting goals in traditional ways; about setting out on a journey and seeing where the road leads me. Yes, there was a story to write. I suppose that was a goal in a sense, but it was still about the journey more than about finishing anything. It’s still about the journey, about letting something organic grow rather than trying to manufacture something artificial.

Organic is good; A journey is natural. I can let it form itself, stop when there’s a rose to smell, run when the way is clear, enjoy the woods when the brush is thick, and not sweat it. It’s not about where I get – it’s about getting. It’s about how I get. It’s about who it makes me.

I’ll be pitching cards tonight night when the clock strikes midnight. No big deal. Ultimately New Years is just another day, a Friday to a Saturday. If I can have another year much like this last one has been I’ll be a happy puppy. I lack for almost nothing, have everything I actually need. The manuscript is getting better and better, and might actually be close to ready for beta readers. I’m close to friends and Mom, and that’s at least as important as anything else right now.

And I’m on the right journey. I like the road. The path is pleasing - creatively, aesthetically and relationally. There are no goals to reach, just a dusty lane to walk, sometimes just a deer path, occasionally no path at all. But there’s always a direction and the journey.

I find that’s enough. I wish the same for you: Enough.

Happy New Year, folks. Have a good one, take a cab, and be excellent to one another.

“Real success is finding your lifework in the work that you love.” David McCullough (1933 - )

Have you ever stopped to think about how you define success? Is it material gain? The relationships you enjoy? Or perhaps the nature and quality of your work? It is a question worth spending some time on.

When I was leading into the life changes I made last winter and spring, it was a question I asked myself a lot. What is really important to me? What are the things that I actually need to be productive and to pursue what it is I feel I am supposed to be doing with my time? If the model of success that I had been trying to horn myself into, like a foot two sizes too big for a shoe, was the wrong model, what was the right one?

Once you’ve asked the questions, if you’ve found the answers, then anything you do in pursuit of that answer is, technically, you succeeding. I don’t think that the purpose of life is to succeed according to anyone’s definition of success but the one that fits for us as individuals. So if you’re chasing after it then you’re a success already. Or as Bob Dylan once said, “What's money? A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.”

Congratulations. Take this moment to raise your right hand directly in the air, bend it at the elbow so that your hand slides down behind your head, and give yourself a couple quick pats on the back. You’re already doing better than most people.

If you can’t honestly give yourself a pat, then ask yourself why. Ask yourself what crisis or epiphany it is you are waiting for. Yesterday is gone, tomorrow may never come. There’s only today, so get after it.