Following your heart

I met with a local newspaper lady this morning about marketing this blog. Personally, the only "papers" I read are the Saturday and Sunday New York Times, with which she is not affiliated. Anyway, this lovely woman, who holds the very modern title of Lifestyles Digital Content Manager, explained that her paper can only market my blog if I want to change it to fit neatly into a distinct category. She observed that currently, the only one it fits is "intellectual/artsy memoir", which her paper doesn't know from. Performer/storyteller/personality Slashtipher Coleman recently described my blog as being about gratitude, which I loved reading and fully embrace. Today's description from the lifestyles digital content manager was not a big surprise, though, and it reminded me of why I have never had any interest in reading her paper. I had actually lowered my expectations of being a perfect blog match for her newspaper about twenty minutes after we were scheduled to meet, when I needed to telephone the lady at her home and remind her of our appointment.

She did compliment my writing style and ask to me to be a guest blogger when I want to share my experiences as a parent, and I may do that, if the current post doesn't completely alienate her. But as far as my morphing this blog into a service-oriented, easily marketable, single category blog, I may sooner be spotted shopping in the petites department of Macy*s. My spirit guides recently assured me that I have always marched to my own constantly changing drum beat in this lifetime, and that I always will. This knowledge is invaluable in that it helps me refrain from trying to fit into anyone else's categories, no matter how tempting it may seem at the moment. The same goes for this blog, because it is purely an extension of me. So, while of course I'd love to get paid to blog, I am not going to try to change how I blog, or who I am.

A friend of a new friend of mine recently posted a blog tribute to his late wife, Sarah Jean Linquist, who was also a muralist. Her legacy, as conveyed in his blog, was that if we are true to ourselves, if we follow our heart, and do what we REALLY want to do, then we will be doing what we are supposed to, and that will be enough. It was a great reminder for me, as I chronically struggle with perfectionism and tend, like many artists, toward harsh self-criticism. But I truly do believe that if we can listen to our innermost promptings, we will do what we are meant to. And what can be better than that? Nobody is put here on this earth to be the best at anything, except at being himself or herself.

So, that is what I will continue to strive to do, and what I urge each one of you to do as well. I've already spent plenty of time and energy attempting the alternative. I won't say I have wasted time, for so long as I can find and hold onto the lesson from each experience and use it to become more fully myself, no experience is a waste of time. Getting a law degree, training to be a retail executive, travelling alone to the USSR, working among a group of Chasidic men while inventorying an entire Brooklyn warehouse, interning at a Boston advertising agency, helping out at Legal Aid and at the ACLU, running my own mural business, teaching art to kids, getting kicked out of college and earning my way back in, writing a feminist thesis on fairy tales, struggling with an eating disorder and modeling as an adolescent, my first marriage - each adventure, each chapter of my life story helps me to move forward more deeply and consciously into the future only when I figure out what it lesson it contained, what it taught me about the world, about life, about myself.

So, darling readers, before I go to the living room to practice my violin, I will close today by sharing and endorsing some wonderful words from the aforementioned recently bereaved man, whom I have yet to meet, a blogger and creative entrepreneur named Robert Fishbone.

He writes:

The challenge is finding our own true voice and being courageous enough to embrace it. This will involve fearless exploration, where you cast aside self-doubt and self-criticism, where you love yourself unequivocally, where you realize each breath opens limitless possibilities. Then you act, not because others are watching, but because you know you are being true to yourself, you are following your heart.