Sunday, April 28, 2013

Implicit Messages


Have you been to my website?  I think it’s a really great place.  I created the content (I’m especially proud of my icons) and my dad built it for me.  Dad also maintains it and solves problems any time they crop up.  My web site feels like a nice reflection of me and of my writing.  It tells you quite a bit about me.  Of course, there’s a section called About The Author and I’ve explicitly told you a bunch about me right there.  But there’s more than that.  There are plenty of implicit messages for those who look.  I’m not going to tell you what they all are, but I will tell you that they’re there.  Go look.  Look at any web site.  Any personal space, digital or RL (Real Life) and you can learn about the individuals who inhabit that space.  Today I’m going to blog about labyrinths.  What does that have to do with implicit messages and my web site?  I’ll let you do the detective work.  And, if you think that’s fun, just wait until you read my fantasy novel and try to figure out what all those implicit messages mean about me and my feisty brain!

There’s a difference between a labyrinth and a maze.  A maze is like a puzzle and has many wrong paths and dead ends.  A labyrinth is less of a puzzle and more of a meditation.  It has a single, winding path.  Sometimes that path draws you closer to your ultimate goal, the center of the labyrinth, and sometimes it draws you away and you wonder if you’re even on the right path.  You are.  There is only one path.  It surprises you with twists, turns and meanders but it is the right path.  Keep trucking along and you will reach your goal.

I was reminded of this by a wise Twitter pal Andrea, @PetSpeakArt, (If you’re on Twitter, follow her) who responded to my gleeful announcement that Head Buckets & Hashtags has garnered its first Amazon review.  Andrea wrote, “This is how it starts! I find the road to building a creative life + livelihood is often NOT linear…all truly creative enterprise has a more unpredictable path”.

In general, I tend to be a linear thinker.  I like life to be tidy.  I want to go from point A to point B, then to point C and on down the line.  You’ve been on this planet for a few years, I’m sure it comes as no surprise to you that life doesn’t work like that.  Oh sure, I get a few tidy days a year that go precisely the way I plan and expect them to, but the other 362 days are anything but predictable and linear.  I’ve learned, over the years, that getting to my goal is less painful when I don’t push the river, when I don’t try to force reality to adjust to my plans.  Ignoring the path and blasting through the walls in order to take the shortest route is destructive.  I have begun to learn to go with the flow, to notice where I am instead of where I want to be.  I have begun to learn that life is like a labyrinth and that I can trust the path.  The path will take me places I never meant to go; never expected; places I need to go.  If I keep trucking along, I learn something with each circuit and, eventually, I reach my goal.  Like the hero’s archetypal journey, following the labyrinth path is about honoring the journey at least as much as the destination.

In two weeks, I will publish my fantasy novel Magic All Around.  I’m excited and eager and scared spitless.  As the deadline inches closer and closer, my anxiety ramps up and up.  I need to keep my feet moving and my eyes on the path ahead of me.  Every time I try to look too far ahead, try to see the end, the goal, the center of the labyrinth, I want to turn tail and flee.  So, if you wonder what I’m up to, I’m over here breathing.  Taking one step.  Then, another step.  I don’t expect to share many blog posts in the next two weeks.  Maybe I won’t post any.  I don’t know because I’m not looking that far ahead right now.  I am still editing and polishing Magic All Around.  I will be putting most of my creative energy into that project.  Then, after Mother’s Day, after the Twitter party and after a day or two of recovery, I’ll be back to blogging again.  And, I’ll be ready to begin writing the sequel to Magic All Around!

In the meantime, I hope you collect some fantastic perfect moment gems.  I also hope you’ll sign up for my e-mail list (1st 100 folks get an Alaskan postcard & entered into the yummy salmon drawing) and attend my Twitter launch party on 5/13/13!

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