Outside the Wall

Let’s play a game called Life in Real Time. This isn’t about a fleeting thought, lyrical debate or who’s hot/who’s not. This is about the wall in front of me at this very second. A wall that any person who works, or dabbles, in creativity faces from time to time that can be as frustrating as a plantar wart. This is about the struggle of what to do next. Without having any kind of ultimate hindsight, I’m starting to see 2016 as a year of reset. That’s a conclusion usually determined further down the road, but if you get lucky, the forest isn’t always so obscured by trees. Or, to mix metaphors, you find the time to take the look in the mirror long enough to notice that something’s missing.

What’s next? Written in the lipstick your subconscious wrote on that mirror the morning before you awoke. Maybe it also says “Thanks for the great night,” but there’s no return number, and now your next encounter is left to chance.

I’ve been very fortunate to have a fairly continuous run of opportunity-meets-operation. I was wrapping up a promotions endeavor when I got the itch to do an interview show, which turned into “The Weekly Feed” and, further along, eventually turned into a dream job with WFPK. Within that came the seeds and conversations that would lead to jobs with Paste Magazine, Salon.com, WAVE 3 and a column here at LEO Weekly. Some things run their course, some become dead weight, some are just edged out by other things and some things get pushed off to make more time with family. We keep the important ones, if we’re lucky enough. But that’s specific to me. We all do these things — pick up projects, play them out and cast them off. We realign, and then…

There’s that itch again. What’s next? Now it arrives like a light rash, strategically placed just out of reach. How do you scratch it? Do you ask a friend for a hand, or do you ask them for a tool? Do you decide to take care of it yourself by finding a wall corner to scratch against? I know, the lipstick metaphor was better.

Dr. Seuss calls this The Waiting Place, and how we get out of that stagnant room is often frustrating in its perplexity. It’s certainly spoiling to have someone call you: You number has been called! Come on down! But that’s like winning the lottery, and it happens as frequently. Also, no one has time to help you, because they’re busy working on their own mission. They have all of the same obstacles as you do with no room for piggybacking.

That’s not supposed to sound hopeless, rather empowering. It’s a will to change your get-up-and-go to a got-up-and-went. Hit the digital pavement and reach out. Put yourself in places where people exist #IRL. Because things happen when people talk, and if you’re a talking people then there’s a better chance you’ll become a happening people.

If you want it. Or, you could also spend the next month re-watching “Gilmore Girls,” because you can’t take any more election coverage, which seeps into every new comedy or drama just the same as the news at 10, and you take your blame out on orange loudmouths for your own rut. But he doesn’t really exist, not to you personally. He’s just a buzzword in next year’s Trivial Pursuit. But maybe you’ll use the excuse anyway to just chill for the winter. Read some books. Hang out in the corner of the coffee shop. Wait for that inspiration to strike so you can hit the ground running in the new year. It’s a dangerous gamble, but maybe it’s still the one you need. Or was I talking about me? Honestly, I don’t know if my anxiety can handle the waiting of that gamble, but where is the line between relaxation and creation? And don’t both carry their own versions of self care?

So this is me in front of the wall. And this is you in front of a wall. Do we scale it? Plow through? Do we cuddle up beside it for a winter’s sleep? There’s no right answer. I just hope there isn’t a wrong one either.

This article appears in November 2, 2016.