Repairing the World

OMG friends, how is it Sunday night already?? Where does the time go? If I’m totally honest, there are more than a handful of moments when I feel like I really can’t handle pitching the book, working on my author platform, building my business, taking care of a little farm and working a full-time job, visiting family (it’s Father’s Day, right?) and continuing to train so that I can still (sort of) be an athlete. Oh, and knit a sweater, because why not? Apparently, I have too much free time.

So, full disclosure: this is not the blog I was going to share with you. I started writing it mid-week, but something about the tone struck me as too heavy for an online audience. About 1,000 words in, I just stopped. I couldn’t do it anymore, which is why you’re finding me here like a college student mere hours before the deadline for that term paper, typing it out for the first time.

(I never did that. I could never leave a paper unwritten until the last minute. I literally would start a writing assignment as soon as I got back to my dorm or room or wherever I was living to just test waters of ideas out. I’d literally re-write the thing no less than three times, but there was something about wading — no diving — in, feeling through the ideas swimming between my fingers and the keyboard that I absolutely loved.)

And yet, here I am: 39 years old, arguably a professional and doing the last-minute thing. Ugh. It’s awful, it’s terrible. But it’s also true, and if I’m honest about what it’s like to be a person who wants to publish a memoir, who wants their own coaching business, who wants to wear a size 2, I guess this is what you do. Basically, you do everything regardless of how overwhelming it can be or is. What choice do I have? I’ve lived the other options, and I’m not interested in any of those anymore.

I pitched the book three times last week. For those who don’t know, it’s not all that different than sending your work into a literary journal, only it’s completely different (ha! OK, I was trying to be funny, but maybe that was just annoying.) You find agents who are looking for something that loosely feels like what you do. You write a query letter, attempt to be charming (Or if they want you to be a little rough, you through in some swear words because I have an inner-pirate) and then you tell them your innermost secrets, because that’s what you wrote your book about.

That’s what I wrote my book about.

And then you click send and there’s nothing but silence.

It’s like that awkward swath of time after a really bad date when you know for sure that guy will never call you back even though he might have seen some part of you naked. And it’s awful like that: revealing yourself to this complete stranger who could save you or crush you (while knowing fully that 90% of these people will crush you.)

And because I’m me, I end up crying: why can’t anyone just love me?

And my orange accountability cat is like: get your ass up, it’s 5 a.m., write your morning pages and feed me treats. And I do: I write. I keep it up, this routine of write, run, coach, work, work, work, feed animals, clean up a lot of shit, write, coach, run, blog, post… you get the idea.

If I’m totally honest, though, it feels like Tuesday felt when I actually did receive a rejection and it made me cry. But, I was OK with that because my very good friend, who used to teach dance classes at the college where I worked was going to come over for dinner (she’s moving away, and I won’t see her again, probably.) Anyway, I hadn’t seen her much since COVID-19, and honestly friends are truly the best — better than skating, better than alcohol. My work day was positively awful, but I knew I was going to survive because I would see a friendly face for the first time in a long time.

And then I got the text from my guy that he was stuck 200 miles away in the middle of the Nevada desert because he’d gone riding out there and could I come get him? It was 4 p.m. and my friend was supposed to come over at 6 p.m., so yeah, you all know how that went. I didn’t cry — I was actually in a place long beyond crying — but the big white dog hopped into the passenger seat (she never does that) and lay her head on my lap for the entire drive there, over the endless undulating sage landscape. If heartache had a roadtrip, that was it.

I’ve thought about that for a lot this week: moving from fire-anger to sadness to resignation. Where I have landed, at least for now, is the idea that this is not the time in my life for love. There isn’t any room for it. The verbs are what define me: I write, I coach, I work, I run. I’m OK with that- actually I love the simplicity of it. The way I can understand those things and do them. I can wake up at 4:30 a.m. to write, to get to work by 7 a.m., to work all day, to train, to coach, to blog, to pitch my book to agents in the nebulous evening hours.

Or, more accurately, I’ve landed with the ducks R. and I saved a few weeks ago when a friend of mine messaged me, asking me if I could save a clutch of duck eggs that a mallard momma had laid in his garden. She lost her life to a hawk. Of course I’d said yes, I would try, not knowing what that meant.

Of eleven eggs, three hatched and the ducklings live in a tubberware brooding box in the kitchen: Serendipi-duck, Lucky and Late. Their chirps are deepening to quacks and I swear to God, they are the messiest birds I’ve ever cared for. But I love them, inexplicably. I couldn’t stand the idea of not having them hatch here, even knowing they will, in all likelihood, fly away.

My friend told me what I had done was tikkum olam, which loosely translated means “repairing the world.” It’s a huge compliment, and one I am not sure I can own. Repairing the world. I sometimes feel as though the world is this web of energy, metaphor, intention, and very often we all just pass on through, and each of us is not on any level to repair or even touch that. And then I think of all I have learned as a Soul-Based Coach: how the soul’s knowing is often beyond all these linguistic concepts, settling into something deeper.

After all, I asked the universe: why can’t somebody love me?

It replied with silence.

Then I realized: the ducks do. They quack at me and like it when I fill the kitchen sink with water so they can swim or feed them their crumble. Accountability cat loves our mornings; the big white polar bear of a dog loves me enough to protect me against both questionable people and my own sadness.

Maybe one day, she won’t need to protect me from my own sadness anymore.