An April Fool’s Intention

I view life as a series of events, a calendar of obligations to fulfill, in exchange for money, social acceptance, and prestige. I experience life this way even when I don’t want to, even when I intend to develop and practice acceptance, and to embody reconciliation. In my mind, there is still a WORK self, with calendar, a RECOVERY self, with calendar, and those calendars contain commitments made, meetings to lead or attend, service opportunities, and fellowship. And then there is my REAL self — the son, the brother, the husband, the father, the friend — who reads, scribbles words, exercises, and wants to do things like write artistically, create visual art, and learn to play a musical instrument. I daydream about these things, research them, make lists to organize their initiation, and place blocks on my calendar to guarantee that I’ll do them. But I don’t. The REAL me gets added to the to-do list, and those calendar blocks get shifted, postponed, deleted entirely, so that I don’t have to acknowledge that I keep making the same mistake, over and again, and have been since I was a college student. I am afraid to learn new things, I am afraid to fail at anything, and I absolutely terrified that you will laugh at my effort, my pretension to something different.

• I daydream now, and wonder: what would it look like if I just DID things?
• How would it feel to be a writer, or an artist, or a musician, not just daydream about it?
• What would it look like to live this process out-loud, to let the process be the piece and the product?

I don’t journal every day, but I do write an intention most weekdays. I sometimes write a paragraph or two about whatever I’ve read in Touchstones, 24 Hours a Day, or a spiritual book. I often daydream about complicated opinions I’d like to share, essays that I’d like to write, stories that I’d like to frame, and lists that you might find interesting. I visualize doing all these things, and constructing collages, and playing piano, and researching a thesis, but I mostly work, exercise, practice recovery, and sleep. I intend to stop journaling in notebooks, and to do it here, and to stop drafting pieces on legal pads, and to do it here. I will learn to manage this site as I go, transparently and out-loud.

I don’t know why, but April Fool’s Day feels like New Year’s to me. I quit nicotine three years ago today, and feel something special about the beginning of baseball season. Maybe this is when I TRY new things, as the temperature warms and the greening begins. We’ll see.