The Texas highway system is really quite beautiful. If you’ve never driven in Texas, allow me to (attempt to) explain. There’s the highway itself, and then running alongside it, the access road. Once you exit the highway, the left lane typically becomes the turn around lane, allowing you to avoid sitting at a light, if your destination is on the other side of the highway, or, if you’ve missed your exit, to make a safe and easy U-turn, to get back on the highway and try again. I don’t have a lot of experience driving in other states, but compared to the highway system (and I use that term loosely) in my hometown in upstate New York, Texas highways are something to revere. When I started driving in my late teens, I lived in fear of missing my exit, because there was no easy way to backtrack or find the highway again. Basically, good luck, and I hope you packed a lunch, especially if you’re directionally challenged as I am. (Needless to say, this was long before the existence of smart phones and Google maps, which I often put on even when I’m 95% sure where I’m going.)
A couple of months ago, I was getting on the highway near my house, headed south. I was in the left lane so I could hit the off ramp in 100 yards or so, and was stopped at a light at the intersection where the surface street crossed underneath the highway (“the overpass”). As I was sitting there, I noticed there was a large piece of debris in the left lane ahead. I began pondering my options. There were already cars in the lane to my right, so once the light turned it wouldn’t be easy to simply change lanes. Plus, then I ran the risk of missing the on ramp, and having to go further down the access road. Not the end of the world, but the stop lights and slower speed limit make covering the same distance take much longer. Obviously I couldn’t just run over this big piece of debris, which looked like a piece of wood. As I was deciding that I’d have to put my blinker on and take my chances changing lanes, hoping I’d be able to move back over in time, I watched a car take the turn around coming from the exit on the northbound side of the highway. He slowed, then stopped when he came to the debris. He could have steered around since the rest of the access road was completely clear. Instead, he put his flashers on, hopped out of the car, and tossed the debris into the grassy embankment. Then he got back into his car and drove on, continuing along the southbound access road ahead of me. All of this before my light turned green. I sent up some gratitude to the person who had literally removed the obstacle I was facing. The universe is clearing the way, I thought.
Since that morning, this has become something I often write down on my gratitude list, a thanksgiving for the ways the universe is taking care of me. Julia Cameron calls these events synchronicities, little (or big) ways the universe is in tune with our needs and desires. For those of us trying to break down creative blocks, the tendency is to explain away the magic when something goes our way, or even to hand it back. In The Artist’s Way, Cameron writes about an aspiring filmmaker who finds himself with a free ride through film school, and he turns it down.
The universe is prodigal in its support. We are miserly in what we accept. All gift horses are looked in the mouth and usually returned to sender. We say we are scared by failure, but what frightens us more is the possibility of success.
-Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way
Last summer, I enrolled in an online writing class that was focused on shaping the narrative arc of a memoir. At the time, I was sitting on a shitty first draft on my memoir, knowing it needed a lot of work but not being sure where to begin.
I took the class and rather than feeling buoyed and ready to revise, I was defeated. The instructor, who I had seen highly praised in various corners of the internet, did not offer me any constructive feedback. She seemed intrigued by some of the events I was writing about, and the observations I’d made about my relationships with other people. She annotated my outline with a few comments of “interesting…” then wrote what amounted to “there’s not much here.” But you just said it was interesting!
Before it was a memoir, it was a group of stories that I kept coming back to, thinking there was something there, until I finally saw how they fit together. In writing it, I felt I was acting on some of the most oft-repeated advice to writers: write the story only you can tell and if a story won’t leave you alone, you have to write it. It is, as all memoirs are, deeply personal. I’ve never entertained the notion that it will make The New York Times best seller list, but it can still be a quiet story about growing up and finding a place of belonging that resonates with people, written as tightly and as beautifully as I can manage. I was annoyed that a writing instructor seemed to be actively discouraging me from getting my words on paper, and my enthusiasm for the project, my belief that I was maybe making something that had value, was gone. I set it aside and thought about other things.
Less than a month later, I was at the airport in Washington, DC, waiting for a connecting flight, when I looked up to see my ex-boyfriend 30 feet away, waiting for a flight at the same gate.
Seeing him again was surreal; we hadn’t seen each other in over a decade, although we had traded a few messages over the years. We talked for a few minutes, then hugged goodbye. As I wandered away with what the hell just happened? running through my mind, I was filled with gratitude. Grateful for the time we spent together, grateful for him being a steady, calming presence in my life when I desperately needed it, grateful for the (hard) lessons I learned from loving him. Grateful for him breaking up with me when he did, because I met my husband a week later.
It would be easy to dismiss this event as a bizarre coincidence. I mean, it’s an airport. And maybe the older you get, the more people you’ve crossed paths with, the more likely it is you’ll bump into them in random places. After my parents moved back to the Austin area after 15 years in New York, my dad ran into a former co-worker at the grocery store on his third day in town.
But then I started working through The Artist’s Way a month or so after I ran into my ex, I started seeing that coincidence for what it is: a grand, beautiful synchronicity, the universe going to great lengths to show me that I need to keep working to tell this story, and that it’s willing to go to great lengths to arrange the things I need, even if it means getting my ex at the same airport gate. Those three minutes gave me a brand new entry into my memoir, one of gratitude and appreciation, for the people and things that have happened to me.
Great, you’re thinking, so now I just wait for the universe to show off in a big way? Not really. Synchronicity can be small things, too. Finding the perfect parking spot. A palette of your favorite underwear, impossible to source, in your size, at Costco (I bought 3 packages of 6). Over the weekend, I suddenly became obsessed with mark-making; a book I was eyeing on amazon was available as an instant e-book download from my public library, and I was working on a mark-making project in my art journal in under 30 minutes. All of these are ways I feel supported and nurtured by the universe, who’s making sure I have what I need to create.
If you’re feeling like there’s just no way the universe is actually supporting you in working towards your creative goals, I’d encourage you to pay attention, really pay attention, and notice any “coincidences” that happen for you this week. Write them down. Thank the universe.
(Have you experienced any wild synchronicities? Drop them in the comments below, or reply to this e-mail. I’d love to hear about them!)
Listening & Reading
I enjoyed episode 128 of The Feel Good Effect podcast. My self-care has kinda been in the toilet lately; I know I need to be better in some aspects. When Robyn talked about writing down her 3 M’s (mind, movement, meals) for each day, a lightbulb went off for me. I’m excited to try that for this week and see if it helps me stick to my goals.
I finished Know My Name. I was not expecting to love it as much as did. Highly recommend.
I started Wild at Heart, the sequel to one of my favorite romance novels, The Simple Wild. I was counting down the days until this book was released and it has not disappointed so far. I’m about 70% done (in all likelihood, I will finish it this evening!), and so into it I was reading it while I stood at the stove making scrambled eggs this morning.
This week…
Playing around with mark making; this exercise is in Rae Missigman’s Paint, Play, Explore.
Being real honest in my gratitude lists; I am grateful for Starburst jellybeans but also big salads!
Mind mapping. I love making these and am planning to use the technique to come up with a long list of metaphors I pull from as I revise my memoir.
Experimenting with bullet journaling again. I have yet to land on a planning system that functions exactly as I need/want it to. Bullet journaling is good for laying out things like meals, vitamins, and supplements.
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