Free from Our Baggage and Bullshit (Blog #982)

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It’s 3:15 in the afternoon, and, like yesterday, I’m blogging earlier than usual because I have plans this evening (last night I went to a show, and tonight I’m going to a dance) and don’t want to be up until all hours writing. Not that I ended up going to bed at a respectable hour last night. Home by 11:00, I was wide awake until 4:00 in the morning. MAAAAYBE I had a smidge too much coffee at dinner. Or it could be that I’ve simply felt better lately and have had–at times–A LOT of energy. My mind starts thinking about things I could do, future projects, and then it’s off to the races. Recently I saw my therapist while I was flying high, and she said, “You’re as happy as I’ve ever seen you.”

I told my therapist that over the last two weeks I’ve felt like a cork that’s been previously held underwater and finally released. Like, WHOOSH! to the surface. She said, “That’s what happens when you’re not suffering.”

Last night my friend Marla and I went to see the comedian Randy Rainbow, and, like I’m wont to do at shows, I bought a magnet as a souvenir. Well, when I got home it was quite the chore to fit the magnet on my magnet board. Alas, after over twenty years of collecting show magnets, my board has gotten quite full. Well, thank god, I finally found a spot. BUT THEN–out of the blue–I remembered a show I saw seven years ago that I never bought a magnet for and impulsively bought it (on sale) online. But where the hell will it go? I thought.

This afternoon I remembered that well over ten years ago when I was still living at home I installed a magnet board covered in vintage movie-star-themed wallpaper on the back of a desk that we still own but whose back is to the wall. Of course, I got excited thinking that I could take the board off the desk and–somehow–mount it in my room. (I realize “mount it” sounds dirty, but I don’t mean it that way. Hell, maybe it doesn’t sound dirty. I’m single. I don’t know these things.) Anyway, down the rabbit hole of possibilities I went considering how I could frame the board and hang it and–because you can’t change one thing without changing everything–how I could rearrange everything else else in my room to accommodate it.

This, as I’ve said before, is why any type of internal or external change is stressful for us. Because deep down we know that changes are like dominos. You set one in motion and then it’s off to the races. You think, I’ll just rearrange this corner, or–I don’t know–go to therapy. The next thing you know, your world’s upside down. At which point you wonder if you’ve done the right thing. But trust me, you have. So just keep going and don’t you dare look back.

Lot’s wife turned to a pillar of salt.

While thinking about my magnet board project I started to get overwhelmed. My Inner Perfectionist told me it had to be “just so,” that there was a right way and a wrong way to do it and that it was MY JOB to figure it out. “Don’t fuck this up,” it said. Thankfully, I ended up telling that guy to give it a damn rest. Because there’s no such thing as perfect, and there’s certainly no way to do this project–or this thing called life–wrong. Granted, there are consequences (results) to our choices, but they’re not as grave as we might imagine. Life is meant to be fun, not so serious.

Along these lines, I ended up putting my project aside to blog for today. Maybe I’ll focus on it next week, maybe I won’t. The world doesn’t turn on my decision. Sure, there will be a domino effect, but–either way–I’ve determined it’s not a big deal.

Last night after the show Marla and I went through a drive-thru to get an ice cream, and–I guess because I have long, fabulous hair–the guy at the window said, “Good evening, ma’am.” Well, I just sat there, letting him figure out that I’m a dude (although I certainly grant it’s getting harder and harder to tell these days). Anyway, he took our order and later when he handed us our frosty treats said, “Good night, sir.” Some people would have been offended about the mix up. But as soon I rolled up my window, Marla and I burst out laughing. This is the power that we have. It’s not life or god who decides if something is a big deal or not–it’s us.

Our perspective determines our experience of reality.

While looking over my magnet collection last night, I remembered with whom I attended each show. And whereas I no longer talk to several of the people who occupy my show memories, I’m proud to say that my memories with them are still fond ones. Thinking of them or the time we spent together doesn’t trigger any resentments. This is good. Not that I want to call them up and go for coffee, but I also don’t want to suffer when I think about them. (The past is over unless we keep it alive.) This afternoon my mom found a picture of me and my sister that neither I or my sister remember seeing before. In it we’re both smiling and laughing big as day. My sister said, “We look so happy.” That’s the deal. Happiness is our natural state. Children know this. We were made to float, not sink through life. And we can. Free from our baggage and bullshit, we WHOOSH! to the surface.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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Stop buying your own bullshit.

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small beginnings (blog #36)

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Last night I slept for a grand total of two hours. When the alarm went off at 7:45 this morning, I stumbled into the kitchen and stood in a daze with the freezer door open for five minutes while I stared at one frozen waffle and wished it were two frozen waffles. (Unfortunately, the waffle never multiplied, so don’t ask me to feed the five thousand.)

I spent the day attending Leadercast at the Van Buren Performing Art Center. Leadercast is an annual, national event where several prominent leaders from various fields come together to discuss leadership. This year’s theme was “purpose,” and the event took place in Atlanta, but was broadcast to cities around the world, including Van Buren. Two of the speakers today were local, and one of them was my friend Marla, and she had an extra ticket, and that’s why I dragged my ass out of bed so early.

When I got to the event, the third speech was already in progress, so I sneaked in the back and thought, Apparently some leaders get out of bed REALLY early. The guy speaking was Jim McKelvey, the creator of the credit card processing software called Square. Well, anytime I attend events like these, I always take notes because my inner straight-A student simply will not quit, even when he’s sleep deprived. So the first thing I wrote in my “lowing my expectations has succeeded beyond my wildest dreams” notebook was “An artist is someone who makes something that nobody needs,” but what I thought was “An artist is someone in his mid-thirties who lives with his parents and stays up until five-thirty in the morning blogging about it,” which just made my ego soar. I’m an artist.

After Jim’s speech, there was a break and I found Marla. We walked upstairs where several sponsors were giving away free pens, magnets, squeezy balls to help reduce stress, and coffee. Ya’ll, I’ve never been so glad to see a cup of coffee in all my life. It tasted like a miracle, better than two frozen waffles ever could have. But the most notable part of the entire break was that there was a jazz combo playing, right there in the middle of the room (in Van Buren, Arkansas). I looked at Marla and said, “Who has a jazz combo at nine-thirty in the morning?” Talk about something that nobody needs. Still, I couldn’t help do a little Bob Fosse number as we walked down the stairs, the whole time thinking, I should get up before noon more often.

After the break, there were more speakers, and then we had lunch. And then there were even more speakers. One guy, a psychologist named Dr. Henry Cloud, told the story of a woman with an eating disorder who used to come to group therapy “dressed to the nines.” And it became this point of discussion, like, why do you have to look so perfect? But she said she just had to.

So one day he’s in a suit and tie, about to leave the group and go straight to give a big presentation, and he looks at this lady and takes his cup of coffee and pours it down the front of his dress shirt and says, “You don’t have to be perfect.”

As he told the story today, he did it again. He just poured his coffee down the front of his white dress shirt, made a couple jokes about not having a six-pack (but having a keg), and kept going with his speech. So I got out my notebook and wrote, “You don’t have to be perfect,” and I centered it perfectly in the middle of the page, and then I went back and added a smart-looking exclamation point. (And that, my friends, is called irony.)

The last speaker in Atlanta was Tyler Perry, the creator of the character Madea. Back to the theme of purpose, Tyler said that he found his purpose on the other side of his pain. Tyler also said that when he was first getting started, he wrote a play that took six years to really get off the ground, that he lived in his car for part of that time. “Scripture reminds us to never despise small beginnings.”

After Tyler, Marla spoke. She talked about how much she loved this area, how her roots were planted deep, and how she wanted local leaders to know what a difference they make, that people notice. Her speech was so beautiful that it almost made me not want to move.

Almost. (But maybe that means that when I do move, I’ll move with more appreciation for my roots.)

This evening I took a nap for a few hours. When I woke up and told my brain that I needed to write, my brain took one look at me and said, “You’ve got to be fucking kidding.”

So here we are. It’s two-thirty in the morning, and I wish I could tell you where I’m going with all this. Usually I try to pick one event or emotion and stick to it, figure it out, find a lesson in it. But on days like today, it’s harder to do that. I heard so many wonderful, inspiring things today. Hell, I heard a jazz combo at nine-thirty this morning. All day I kept thinking about the blog and about writing, about being an artist and how I struggle with perfection. I thought about how therapy and even this blog have helped me to work through my pain and how it feels like I’m getting closer to my purpose. I thought about small beginnings, how I often despise them, wishing for something better rather than appreciating them for what they are—actual beginnings.

And how beautiful it is to begin!

And how beautiful it is to begin, however imperfectly.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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All great heroes, at some point, surrender to the unknown.

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farts aren’t planned (blog #32)

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This morning I woke up with a tickle in my throat. I actually dreamed about it last night, and a friend in the dream told me to eat some yogurt. So that’s what I did when I got out bed because I wanted my subconscious to know that I’m listening to it. Now if I end up getting sick, I’m going to tell my subconscious to go screw itself, to which I’m sure it would reply, “Will you PLEASE go to bed sooner, quit eating ice cream and tacos for dinner, and stop thinking that you’re still twenty-three?”

Well, maybe today’s the day. With any luck at all, I’ll finish this post before the sun goes down, and I can get some sleep. Before the week is over, I plan to clean up my diet, start doing some push-ups. And then in two weeks, maybe my favorite pair of jeans won’t look like a pair of acid-washed yoga pants.

Whenever I decide to start or stop something, to form or break a habit, there’s always a lot of buildup and anxiety about it. I think about it, pray about it, think about it, pray about—for weeks, sometimes months. Not changing anything, mind you, just stressing.

Once a change HAS been made, I can rock out a good habit for a while—meditating every day, going to the gym five times a week, eating well. But then something happens, and that all goes to shit, and it’s cigarettes for breakfast and banana splits for lunch.

When things are going “the right way,” when I’m behaving like I think I should, I feel pretty good about myself. But when things fall apart, my go-to response is to beat myself up, to start “shoulding” on myself. My therapist says that’s because I want things to always be the same. But everything changes, she says. Even good habits fall away.

For the longest time, I would go to my therapist’s office and beat myself up about smoking cigarettes, a habit that started in my early twenties and effectively disappeared until I broke up with my ex three years ago. And while I was more concerned about my health and what other people would think if they found out, she was more concerned about the fact that I was shoulding on and judging myself. She said that one day I would have enough and quit.

And she was right. One day it became clear. I stopped. Just like the seasons, it changed.

This afternoon my friend Marla and I went to speak at our friend Anita’s writing class at the Fort Smith Public Library. (That’s our picture at the top of the blog.) Anita has been teaching writing in Fort Smith since God was a small child, and her second novel comes out this summer. Like her first novel, it’s about a murder that took place in Van Buren over thirty years ago. Anyway, I thought that I was going to the class to support Marla and reconnect with Anita, but had I read my messages more clearly, I would have known that I was actually going to speak about my glamorous life as a blogger.

So I winged it and read a story I wrote last September about how unhappy I was owning the dance studio and living in Fort Smith, how I wanted to write more and move to Austin. And then I talked specifically about the blog, and Anita told the class that if you don’t like R rated movies, don’t go to one, and if you don’t like four-letter words, don’t go to Marcus’s blog.

So even though I didn’t plan to speak, it all turned out fine. And what I loved about it is that there wasn’t any planning, no thinking about it and praying about it, no anxiety. It just happened.

When I finished, a dear lady named Marilyn said, “Marcus, I think you need to get on the next bus out of here. Just move to Austin.” And then several others chimed in and said, “Fuck it. You only live once.” (I’m paraphrasing. They didn’t actually say that.) But I totally felt encouraged, so I asked Marilyn if she’d like to take a selfie with me, and she said, “I would love that,” so here it is.

Alan Watts tells the story of a Buddhist monk who poetically stated that you can’t plan everything in life. You don’t think, I’m going to go to the supermarket at ten tomorrow morning and then “drop fart” at ten-thirty. And this is actually a spiritual lesson. Farts aren’t planned. They’re “a happening.”

Honestly, I think I give myself too much credit. It’s probably an ego thing. I think that I can control when I get sick and when I get well, when I work and when I don’t, and where I live. And I’m not saying I don’t have any influence in what I eat or when I go to bed or when I’ll move to Austin, but I do think my therapist and the Buddhist monk are right. One day, I’ll clean up my diet and go to bed sooner. One day, I’ll get on a bus and get out of here. When that is exactly, I can’t say, but I can save myself a lot of anxiety by not worrying about it so much. When it’s time, I think I’ll know it’s time, and it will simply happen. And just like the speech that wasn’t planned, it will all turn out fine, even if there are a few four-letter words along the way.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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Perhaps this is what bravery really is--simply having run out of better options, being so totally frustrated by the outside world that all you can do is go within.

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