why you should go over the edge

Working at your edge. Allie and I talk about this all the time. We try to walk up to it, define it, encourage each other to work there and passed it. But what does that even mean? It's not something that someone else can illuminate for you. It's always changing, from moment to moment, because it's based on the mystery of your inner mechanism. The brain tied to the heart tied to the ability tied to the fear.

Sometimes when I look at highly functioning, well-funded, pristine and polished pieces of work I think - now those are the edgy and smart tastemakers. They have something going for them. And whatever it is, they've been able to alchemize it into profit or success or longevity. It's unnamable. We try to access it with words, but the more we try the more it escapes.  But we do know they have ideas that are validated by material affirmation.

Then sometimes I look at low functioning, budget-restricted, sloppy and unkempt pieces of work and I think - THAT is the edge. Diving into the abyss with no life raft, drifting on the bare bones of grit and hope. Not knowing if you'll ever land. There is something unmistakably dangerous when the odds are against you. We call it edgy because it's alone in the wilderness, where validation is extinct.

The only thing I know for sure about the edge is that it's where you are discovered. Whether it's easy or difficult or boring or frightening, it brings you out of you. Because no one else is there. No one else can show up to it. When the moment comes and you are standing heels on the line, toes dangling over it, the edge will tell you who you are.

Can you survive it? Can you balance on it - trying as hard as you can to stay centered and unshakable? Is that even the point? Or should we just tumble over, release that last piece of imagined control and find out who we are past the tipping point? I suppose the fear is of the complete and utter knowing of ourselves. The knowledge that means we can't go back. The possible disappointment. Or potential power.

Steven Pressfield calls this moment "turning pro." It's a sort of shutting off of whatever held you back in safety. A death of your pre-edge self. And like everything else in life, it's a choice. I don't know what it would look like for you - maybe relief, maybe freedom, or absurdity, or severity, or grace, or triumph. But I do know that your edge is an undiscovered no man's land - if you aren't there, no one is. But when we allow ourselves to pioneer our way into this unknown territory of ourselves, we become explorers for others, too. We allow them access to our edge and permission to reach their own. And when we do that, we just might make something worthwhile.

"The Edge... there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over."

- Hunter S. Thompson

 What does your edge look like? Have you gone over it?

taking fear along for the ride

Five years ago, I was offered a creative opportunity I really wanted.

Here was my first reaction: Holy @#$% YES!!!

Here was my second reaction: Holy @#$%, I can’t do this.

Well I did it and did the best work I could, but I was haunted the entire time by feeling number two. What Brené Brown calls “gremlins,” what Steven Pressfield calls “Resistance,” what Craig calls “bullshit,” all of those thoughts crept in and around my creativity. I wasn’t free, I was looking in on myself, I was stifled and scared and plain old MEAN to myself. I considered all the terrible things people might say about me and told those things to myself first so that I was prepared. Prepared for what was surely going to be my inevitable demise and destruction by virtue of me simply showing up on the playing field. I left satisfied with the work I did, but feeling like I lost an important part of the creative act: the courage to be seen, or, authenticity.

So five years came and went with a lot of what Marc Maron calls "Thinky Pain." I earned some recognition. I got married. I didn’t work for a painful stretch of time. I was depressed. I got over it. I recommitted myself to the fact that my life’s work and purpose have nothing to do with stability and security (and certainly not affirmation). I redefined success as authenticity.

And then something happened. I was offered another opportunity I really wanted. And once again…

My first reaction was: Holy @#$% YES!!!

My second reaction: Holy @#$%, I can’t do this.

Because the lesson will keep showing up until you’ve met it face to face.

There was a time I thought I’d finally be free from fear - that I would know so much, or have so much experience that my confidence would be effortless. That I wouldn’t feel like a fraud. That my abilities would speak for themselves and the gremlins would quiet down. Now I know that despite the knowledge I develop, the experience I gather, the abilities I hone, the gremlins stick around. I know enough to know, I will never know enough.

And that is okay.

Five years ago, the unknown mystery of what I could possibly produce and accomplish frayed my nerves. I suffered because instead of embracing what I couldn’t predict, I fought against it. Nowadays, all I know is that I don’t know. All I can do is jump in with a full heart that includes both YES and I can’t do this. And somewhere in the battle between both feelings, work emerges. A bigger story is told. And the bullshit, while still along for the journey, takes a backseat to authenticity.

What's the scariest part of creativity for you?

 

 

keeping (or not keeping) our new year's resolutions

This week, our Facebook newsfeeds will be flooded with links to New Year’s Resolution Lists. The Top 187 things that we’re leaving behind in 2013, that we’re bringing into 2014. New mantras, old habits, and promises of effective and immediate change.

If I’m honest with myself, I have a laundry list of personality traits I’d like to dispose of, or reinvigorate, or kind of ignore for another year. I could tell you that I am wanting to be more honest, drink more water, be more vulnerable with my family and friends, take more risks, love more deeply, speak up more, set healthier boundaries, decrease the cheese intake. I really want to do and be all of those things. But there’s this little nagging voice inside my head that says: you have too much on your plate, you’re going to forget half of these things, you’ll be good for a week and then BAM you’ll be knee deep in a Stouffer’s Family Size Mac’n’Cheese.

I can recognize this voice as the voice of my Resistance. Steven Pressfield in his masterpiece, The War of Art, writes:

There’s a secret that real writers know that wannabe writers don’t, and the secret is this: It’s not the writing part that’s hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write. What keeps us from sitting down is Resistance.

Obviously Resistance doesn’t just strike writers, Pressfield goes on to name the most common times it will creep up. He calls them Resistance’s Greatest Hits:

1. The pursuit of any calling in writing, painting, music, film, dance or any creative art, however marginal or unconventional.

2. The launching of any entrepreneurial venture or enterprise, for profit or otherwise.

3. Any diet or health regimen.

4. Any program of spiritual advancement.

5. Any activity whose aim is tighter abdominals.

6. Any course of program designed to overcome an unwholesome habit or addiction.

7. Education of every kind.

8. Any act of political, moral, or ethical courage, including the decision to change for the better some unworthy pattern of thought or conduct in ourselves.

9. The undertaking of any enterprise or endeavor whose aim is to help others.

10. Any act that entails commitment of the heart. The decision to get married, to have a child, to weather a rocky patch in a relationship.

So knowing we have all these goals and all of this Resistance, what does it really take to change? How do we actually release the habits that have kept us anchored for years? How do we know when we’re truly ready for something new? Basically, how do we sit down to write?

Change is uncomfortable. It can hurt. Sometimes, it makes us feel ashamed like we should have been doing this better all along. Sometimes, it feels futile because we don’t think anyone else notices our progress. Sometimes, it gets us angry because we think we're changing so much and everyone else is at a standstill. All of these discomforts are strong enough to make us want to hide. Cover. Lie. Resist.

But here’s what I know for sure: when we decide we’ve had enough, we get to work.

Real change requires no effort. Not that you won’t stumble into Resistance, not that we won’t have our doubts, not that we won’t run into roadblocks - we will. But the pain of staying the same will be far greater than the pain of changing.

We need to have had enough.

Enough of the relationships that don’t feed us. Enough of the food that drags our energy down. Enough of the work schedule that leaves no room for play. Enough of the hateful self-talk that steers us into depression. Enough of being surprised when someone we shouldn’t depend on in the first place lets us down. Enough of lying to ourselves.

Perhaps the biggest step I’ve ever made to effective and immediate change has been telling myself the truth first. “Hey Court, guess what? That is not the person you want to marry. / That friendship makes you sour and mean and gossipy. / You are bored out of your mind when you’re doing _______. / You are operating out of perfectionism and not passion.” All truths. All painful at the time. All followed by swift decision-making that led me to immediately enact change.

Maybe choosing New Year's Resolutions based on what we've had enough of is the surest way to keep them. But we won't know what that is until we get really honest with ourselves. Painfully honest. Until the pain of lying to ourselves becomes greater than the pain we might feel by switching it the hell up, change will feel like a boulder we shove and shove but can't move. And listen, if you don’t want to change bad habits - if you want to stay friends with downers, or hold onto a love that isn’t going anywhere, or stay stuck at a job you hate, that’s fine, too. Just be awake enough to realize you’re choosing it. Understand you just haven't had enough yet.

It's true that having had enough means things can get messy. And it makes sense that we’re afraid of cracking, of breaking open, of being so totally exposed that we can’t protect our one and fragile heart. But the crack, the brokenness, the exposure is exactly what cleans up the mess. The perfectionism and denial cocktail won’t keep bad things from happening to us, it won’t keep everything in its place, it won’t even keep us from dying. What it will keep us from is knowing every inch of our imperfect, resilient hearts. And when we practice honesty, get fed up, and start letting go of that which diminishes our spirit, we realize just how resilient our hearts can be.

Ring the bells that still can ring

Forget your perfect offering

There is a crack in everything

That’s how the light gets in.

- Leonard Cohen

What is the biggest, scariest, most worth it change you've ever made?