From finance to farming.
Let’s backup a little and just say that today was a perfect day. A day where you feel infinite. All good and only good can come from today. And I’m not just saying that because I saw the incredible film version of The Perks of Being a Wallflower.
I discovered everything I love to do in life, I was honest with myself, and I did every one of them today.
Sound, sing, write. Those three things.
To quote just one of the many crazy good lines from my favorite book - James Allen - As A Man Thinketh, “The will to do springs from the knowledge that we can do. Doubt and fear are the great enemies of knowledge, and he who encourages them, who does not slay them, thwarts himself at every step.”
So I started doing the things I love and excluded the things I don’t. Easier said than done. But today I did. I also realized how necessary it is to work out. To keep blood flowing, keep your human instincts sharp and intact. Keep your happiness flowing. Then I got my studio and recording space slowly up to spec. Just enough for me to be able to record whatever comes out. The most terrifying thing in my life but also the thing I want moreso than anything. To sing, play, record, perform.
How many of my stories have begun from this year, I then went on a date.
There was once a woman I met and we fell in and out of something that was not love but something similar. Close, very close. She disappeared and I was hurt. Then she came back. At the most unexpected time as all women do when they hurt you. Right when you forget. That unexpected late night that she did come back - she paid me many genuine compliments and it felt great. She told me my five main characteristics and was spot on about them all. I forgot the fifth. Also spot on. I had a feeling I might not ever see her again after that great night, but I did.
Now, you see, the thing is, she doesn’t believe in…anything. And she is one of the smartest people I’ve ever met - but she is so smart she doesn’t believe in anything. “Animals plus,” she calls us. Fate, chance, luck, heavens, horoscope, energy. None of it. Awkwardly enough she said this just as I was starting to realize that everything - is - energy and nothing but. Nevermind that though…we’ll get to the connection soon.
She came back and we spent some time together again today and we were small talking and it came up that she hated her high paying finance job. She said she is going to quit, but she didn’t know what she wanted to do next. “Manual labor,” she said, “is what I want to do.” I thought she was joking. She wasn’t. So I mentioned to her that there are many really cool restaurants in Austin that feature “From The Farm To Your Table” fresh food from local farms. The light went off. She got tears in her eyes and said, “That’s it.”
And so our convoluted relationship and friendship and whatever it might be came together at that point. The pinnacle. The echelon. The culmination of the journey where you realize and wonder if everything happened specifically the way it did so we could share in that moment that night and this moment tonight, together. I don’t know. But it was beautiful. I was glad to be there. I had put something so life changing and beautiful out in front of myself, casually, to someone else. And it rocked her world. That’s not to say I don’t think she wouldn’t come to a similar conclusion on her own because I think she would, but to be the person that plants a genuine seed of good intent in front of someone else and now hopefully get to watch it grow…is what I believe to be a very-few-in-a-lifetime-moment. And then to acknowledge you might have to see her walk off and never return again like before is somewhat of a freeing, sad, but also beautiful, feeling. Regardless, it was a moment both of us will realize and remember forever. A moment I think extends beyond common circumstances - a moment of two necessary energies meeting each other at the perfect time. The way the world should work.
Speaking of perfect, I also got a perfect picture of the great city of Austin, Texas tonight. With birds flying everywhere from the sunset off of the highway with my favorite skyline of the city poking through in the back. The condos I want to live in, and some cool local landmarks. The city looked so peaceful, ominous, and beautiful all at once. Like it was setting itself up for me, as it knew what was about to happen.
The pizza was great, the movie was better than great. It was like taking a time capsule back to high school and all those feelings - most specifically that love and that awkward exuberance and misery of being outcast and a part of everything all at once. The love I really felt shine through more than the sadness. I felt like I was watching myself onscreen. The way all films strive to make you feel, feel the resonance. A timeless movie already, you have to see it.
Then the night ended, I came home, and I started to write. And write I did.
Nothing further might come from any of it, but today was one of those few days I did absolutely everything I loved - and it loved me back.
To reverberate James Allen, “Men do not attract that which they want, but that which they are.”
