No More Waiting

Whatever you do, when you return from a month gone in Europe, do not claim that you are not jetlagged, because even though the first night may go fine, the second, you will toss and turn on your couch, and end up sitting in the backyard writing in your journal while your dog falls asleep with her face on your arm.

That's right, its 5 am, and I'm sitting outside writing. Writing writing writing, but not like when I was there, not in my tiny leather bound journal, covered in water from the Lourve, not at some street corner café that serves the best coffee I've ever had, not smoking a cigarette that I rolled myself, filled with yumyumyummy hash imported by fuegan pocket straight from Amsterdam, and not wondering what I will be doing the next day.

I know what I am doing tomorrow, now, I do, and I've had the past month to think about this moment right now, and while I was in that moment, the moment in Paris at the café, or in Amsterdam at the bar, or Zurich high above the lake wandering through some strange Swiss couple's vineyard, I managed to live in that precise moment, with nothing more than a glance toward this moment right now. That is the funny thing about time. All we have is this moment right now.

They say a great way to quit smoking cigarettes is to say to yourself "I'm just not going to smoke right now," because now is all the time, and if you say you will smoke one tomorrow, well then tomorrow comes, and you are already saying "I'm just not going to smoke right now" and next thing you know, days have gone by and you have been living in this precise moment, putting things off till tomorrow that you aren't sure you want to do anyway. In fact, you are putting something off that you don't want to do, and so you say tomorrow, and tomorrow never comes because all that exists in this world, on this spinning watery globe, is this moment. Right now.

At 5am. Jetlagged.

So I decided to write. Which is funny because after a month of handwriting all my thoughts in a journal, it seems I've forgotten how to type. In France, the keys are in different places on the keyboard, and I had to train myself to use it so that I may answer emails. Unfortunately, I'm not 100% sure you can teach this old dog new tricks, in as far as reacquainting myself with the French keyboard, and I only blogged once while out there. The story of me throwing Joachim Kessefs computer at the wall. Fortunately, all those years of school paid off and I managed to get my thoughts down on paper, scratched and scribbled after nights of wandering the Parisian streets on my lonesome. The most tragically romantic evenings of my entire life, spent by myself, looking at the Eiffel Tower's ocean blue glow over a glass of Bordeaux. It was beautiful. And exactly how I wanted it to be. Lonely, romantic, and all in my head.

While away, I've had several awakenings. Not in that crazy Shelly Lubben sense, like I'm gonna start getting jiggy with the big guy upstairs, but in that American Beauty paper bag blowing in the wind way, the way that matters, because the revelations start from within, and manifest their glory, and purity in the simplest things, like orange and red falling leaves, or an old bum walking along a canal ten times slower than life seems to travel. There have been things and ideas that created themselves inside my head, and these ideas were so magnificent, so powerful, that they stayed with me along the journey, and even on the way home, into the warm Southern California night, waking me at 5am to remind me that this is my home, and this is where everything I want, can happen. And actualize. THIS is IT.

Along my way, after many conversations, I found a running theme in people's lives is "We will see." By the second week of hearing this, this lame excuse for inaction, I decided to protest the theme by not waiting to see. By just doing. By initiating my life, and my actions, my thoughts and my dreams, and living them in every single moment of every single day. And this new theme, this idea of not waiting for a result, and instead acting and existing until the moment where I knew it was the result, my pure existence, and even in that moment, it was filled with the same passion and gusto as the moment before, the moment where I was still performing the action that all the rest of the world is still "waiting to see" the result of, the actions that they simply "wait to see."

I don't want my life to be filled with waiting anymore. I don't want to "wait and see" how it turns out because I know now if I work hard, and make it happen, I don't have to wait and see. I know exactly how it will be. How my life will turn out, how the people in my life will love me, and I will love them, how the business will be run, and how the website will succeed, and how the book will sell, (oh, didn't I mention I'm writing a book?), and how this moment is right now, this very second, sitting in Los Angeles' attempt at a frosty morning, no need for a jacket, in my backyard listening the the varoooom of people waiting to see what happens at work, and planes jetting across the sky filled with people waiting to arrive at a destination, and the tip type tapping of my nails on the keyboard.

I don't need to wait to see the sun come up.

I already know it will.