In Between

Colors of Fall out my bedroom window.

I woke up this morning to a gorgeous fall-colored day: The sky in the background was big fluffy grey clouds and fog, the foreground was this lovely old sycamore tree with leaves of yellow, green, and brown (as close to fall color as we get here in Northern California), the sky was blue, but early-morning, low-light, mid-October blue. I've come to recently admit out loud (I feared summer would get hurt and never return and I would be devastated) that my favorite season isn't really a season at all. It's a time in between. I love the time in between summer and fall. When the light starts to get thin and golden, when the days begin to shorten, when the color shifts from bright everywhere, to bright in certain places like sun on leaves or dark clouds. In fact, if I think about it, most of my favorite moments are times in between. Just before sunrise and just after, dusk and the gloaming, 3 a.m. in the city, the moments just before a musician starts to play.

I got really clear several weeks ago, while on a retreat, that I was supposed to write. There is a book called "The Crossroads of Should and Must" and writing for me has always fallen into the must category, but I'm not one of those people who finds an art and is compelled to pursue it, consumed by thinking about it and practicing it. My nature is truly not addictive and I get easily distracted from my art by shoulds. I often think of the idea in "The Power of Habit" that states that most of our athletic and creative geniuses get to where they are with a foundation of at least 10,000 hours of practice. There are 365 days in the year. If someone spent a regular 40-hour week doing this thing they loved it would take 250 weeks or just over four years to get that 10,000 hours. Let's pretend they also have a family and a day job and can only spend 20 hours a week. That's eight years. Or 10 hours a week. That's 16 years. Or one hour a day. That's 27 years.

My jewelry studio where I used to create every day.

I often fault myself for not becoming great at something in my life so far. For not being a famous singer (I really wanted to sing when I was young) or for not being a famous writer or a famous jewelry designer. Or really, for just not being the best at something I really loved. And I think about those 10,000 hours and I get stuck in between wanting it now and knowing I must practice to get there. I get stuck wishing I had started years ago, so that I'd be better at it now. And then I remember that now is the only actual thing that exists and the whole point isn't how good I am, but how truly I show up in the experience. In this case, the experience of writing. Ten thousand hours or not, I can still get to that in-between space of just being when I write.

When I got really clear that the thing that was going to truly make me happy in this world was to write, there was a caveat - I am to write what is in my heart. It was as if someone sent me a telegram with a very clear message: "Write what is in your heart and everything else will take care of itself." Those were the exact words I heard and felt. I could feel that if I did that one thing, truly everything else in my life: money, work, home, love, family, day to day existing as a human - all of that would take care of itself.

I love clouds. Perhaps because their very essence is in between.

It seemed really simple at the time, but now that I am back in my real life, all of the shoulds push all of the musts off to the corner, where they sit waiting. Waiting for time, waiting for energy, waiting until I'm done with all the shoulds. But musts don't wait well. They shrivel, they loose their shine, they turn their back and droop their head. Musts really get hurt when we ignore them. And I've been ignoring my musts for a long while now, trying to fill their void with whatever is handy: chores, work, people, taking care of my dog.

But I don't want to live an in-between life. I don't want my favorite things to be fleeting and intangible. I want to put the things I love doing most at the forefront of my life. I want to let go of being afraid of not knowing, of wondering how. I want to have a life that is full of art and love and creation, rather than pushing and trying and struggle.

To give my life credit, it has a lot of love and joy. What it's missing is the creation part. I need to create to be fully who I am, but I set it aside for reasons I don't fully understand, but lately, it has been coming back. I've been feeling that desire to create that borders on need, that push that brings me from thought to action, from mind to spirit, that brings me from the day to day human I am to the being that can get lost in the creating - where the outside world: time, errands, money, chores - all no longer exist and I am not an I, there is no am, there is just the creating. There is just being in that in between space where the mind lets go and the heart and soul take over. The in-between state of Grace.

As of today, I vow to give myself the time to experience that particular in-between state of Grace for a few moments. Every. Single. Day.