Patience
Dear Reader,
I’ve been slow lately - I’ve been taking my good sweet time with a lot of stuff recently and I’m not sorry for it. There are seasons to life and we ought not resist them.
Somehow, despite my neglect, I’ve managed to attract new subscribers to this publication, so I’ll start with hello and thank you. I’m Anna-Marie. People call me AMO. I’m a former librarian, I’m writing my third book, and I am documenting it here.
My goal is to share the process with you, including parts of the book as they are written. You’ll get a glimpse into my overall outlook and attitude about life and creativity. It’s not neat, pretty, or predictable. It’s all intuitive - I write what needs to be written when it needs to be written, and I’m in no way strategic.
For a while, I was really focused on teaching and coaching, but family commitments and health issues were making the teaching and coaching quite stressful.
I woke up one morning in early May and I realized I was spending way too much brain power on a lot of stuff that wasn’t related to my writing. I had to make a choice, and I did.
I just want to relax and get this book up and out of me.
Writing this publication serves a few different purposes. One, to document this messy and wonderful book-writing process. Two, to connect with and stay in touch with people who read my first two books. Three - if I’m doing it well - maybe to inspire and encourage a few readers to live a more creative life.
Anyways, thanks for your patience and energetic support. I hope you’ll stick around.
As I start to build the skeleton of this book, I realize I need to fill in quite a few holes in my manuscript. Below I’m sharing a rough chapter that needed written, and I’m sure it’ll get rewritten at some point. You can read back through my archives to get more rough chapters and scenes.
It was a beautiful, rainy afternoon on the Big Island of Hawaii and Jim and I had just spent a couple of hours swimming and snorkeling at a magical place called Champagne Pond - a hot pond on the ocean, located across a razor-sharp lava field that required a 4X4 vehicle. The pond bubbled with sea life and delicious warm water blessed by Pele herself. The entire day had been devoid of other people and we hadn’t had cell service for a week.
I was relaxed. Deeply, to the bone, warmly, contentedly, finally relaxed. More relaxed than I had been in many years, and not just from the good pakalolo we scored from the toothless waiter our first morning in Pahoa Town.
We’d been swimming with a honu the size of a small car that afternoon, and I was still buzzing at the magic of it. I hadn’t thought about work, or the library, in quite a while, even though I knew I’d be returning to a shit-storm of remodeling and budget issues. For right now though, I was on Island Time.
We were bouncing slowly down an old government road in the jungle in a rental Jeep - not quite lost, we knew exactly where we were geographically, and the ocean was just yards away from us as we motored along.
We just didn’t know how far the unmarked, unpaved road would take us. The paper map wasn’t clear. It only indicated a faint gray line that disappeared into a solid block of green forest reserve. We thought we might have to turn around and go back up and around the way we came.
We had nowhere to be, though. We decided to take the chance on the shortcut, hoping to end up somewhere near our rental house, which was just on the other side of that block of green on the map, perched along the edge of a cliff a couple of miles up the coast.
We were going slowly, not only because the road was mostly unpaved - it was just two wheel-ruts through a tunnel of trees in places - but also because there were a dozen little mongoose (mongooses?) running along with us beside the Jeep, crossing back and forth in front of us in a playful way and we didn’t want to squish one of them under our fat tires.
Then, like an apparition in the mist, we saw a tall woman walking, slowly and carefully, with a long wooden staff in her hand to balance her steps as she picked her way along the muddy road.
She had beautiful long gray hair worn in two braids, a hippie house dress, and a pair of old Birkenstocks. She carried a rough, macrame sack across her thin torso full of fruits and vegetables. She lifted her arm in acknowledgement when she heard our Jeep behind her.
Jim and I didn’t say anything to each other, our actions were silent and instinctual. He slowed down and I greeted the woman with an Aloha!
She looked so pleased to meet us, and was grateful at the offer of a ride.
I vacated the front seat and crawled into the back so she wouldn’t have to. She had been visiting some friends that morning and was walking the few miles back to her home when it started to rain. She didn’t mind the rain, but it was getting slippery.
She had such a beautiful, peaceful energy about her. She radiated happiness, kindness, and love. Jim and I both felt it.
We told her we were from Arizona, it was our first time on the Big Island and it was our first real exotic vacation. That we had an 18-month old baby girl who was staying with her grandparents for the week, and it was our first time ever away from her.
We explained that were there celebrating his 40th birthday, but really, it was also our honeymoon, twelve years after getting hitched in a quickie Vegas wedding (and sixteen years after what I thought would be a one night-stand with this cute fratboy-type guy.)
The old woman asked if I was still nursing the baby, and I told her no - that she had weaned herself at 5 months old after I went back to my full-time library job and couldn’t keep up with the pumping in my not-so-private office.
The Library. Hadn’t thought of it all week. Daggone it.
At the time, when I was nursing her and realized my milk was drying up, I was upset. It made me feel a bunch of mom-guilt for not persevering. I had hoped to go for a year with her, but I failed. I confessed it to this old lady, and she understood.
“Will you have another baby?” she asked.
Ironically, we had just decided recently that, at the ages of 37 and 40, we were OK with just the one. She was a great baby. We were one and done.
As I said it out loud to the old woman, though, I felt way more than a little sad.
She told us a little about herself. She escaped the corporate rat race on the mainland, had moved to the Big Island 20 years ago, and was now an artist.
Her children were grown, those responsibilities were behind her. But she loved babies.
I didn’t ask about a husband or a partner. She lived out in the middle of a giant tropical jungle, gardening, painting, raising chickens and walking old forest roads in the rain. I felt pangs in my heart for her. I wanted to know her. She felt magical, like a Merlin, a beacon towards my future.
I realize now - I wanted to BE her.
She was only in the Jeep for a mile or so when she indicated that the path to her property was coming up. She told us that the road we were on did indeed go through to our neighborhood, like we had hoped.
There were so many more things I wanted to ask her, but there was no time. We all got out of the Jeep, stood in the drizzle for a moment and she handed me a beautiful mango out of her bag.
Then, she suddenly embraced me, hugged me like a daughter, kissed me on both cheeks and said “Aloha! I love you!”. I laughed out loud and said it right back to her.
She did the same thing to Jim, too, and he did the same thing back.
We watched her disappear up her path, and we bumbled down the road until it ended at the far end of the neighborhood we were staying in.
We ate the mango with our simple home-cooked dinner that night, prepared by me in our little rental as the dark waves pounded the cliffs nearby. Not only could we hear the ocean in this house - we could FEEL it, like a second heartbeat, deep in our bones. I imagined writing books there, but hadn’t tried to write in a long time, other than the witty office memos that my staff seemed to appreciate.
I’ve thought about her often over these years, that old woman, my Magical Jungle Crone. What became of her? If I went looking, would I find her again? She gave me a glimpse of the future I wanted for myself. Authenticity, beauty, nature, peace, creativity, love. Being a library manager and dealing with all the stress was the exact opposite of what felt right to me, what I wanted for my future.
We came home from that trip - our first real, exotic vacation together, our honeymoon a dozen years later after our wedding - and Jim was in a car accident that wrecked his knee, my library department was relocated for a remodel, we had to let our home go to foreclosure, and my old beloved truck blew out its engine.
Our plump and healthy baby boy was born in late October.
Last August, I turned off the paid subscription feature for this publication. I wasn’t posting as often as I had hoped, I was taking a series of intense classes, and didn’t feel worthy of support.
But, I’ve been thinking - I’m going to turn the paid subscriptions back on again.
I want to open energetic pathways, and this is one of them. Am I worthy? Maybe. Is it up to me to decide who wants to donate? Nope, not at all.
But I shouldn’t purposely block opportunities or blessings.
Growing up in poverty - it messes up your relationship to money, to value, what it means to work, what it means as an artist.
In some ways, growing up poor prepared me well. In other ways, it has held me back, because I’ve always, always been in survival mode. I don’t know how to relax and not feel guilty. I take nothing for granted, that’s for sure.
It’s a whole topic I’d like to explore one day - poverty, money, creativity. Maybe here, I don’t know. I’ll probably get to it, eventually.
Anyways, point is, I’m turning the paid feature back on. If my work amuses, entertains, or inspires you - awesome. Stay subscribed.
If you have the financial means and would like to gift the equivalent of an Iced Grande Caramel Macchiato every month - consider becoming a paid subscriber.
I’ll always aim to keep this publication free - although I may, at some point, put extra goodies, like an audio version - or the juiciest and most salacious parts - behind a small subscription fee.
Like any good library, as a writer, I’m sure there is something contained within me to offend everyone. No one is spotless, and I think virtue is overrated. It’s boring, actually. I’m exhausted at everyone being offended all the time. I want truth and honesty and a little dirt in my writing, and I hope you do, too.
Thanks for your support no matter what. My promise to you is that I will never use AI write any of my content. I am a 100% organic human brain and female heart. No botox, fillers, or surgery - just lots of mascara and rebellious thoughts that no AI can duplicate.
I am compelled to write it down to document it for some crazy reason. It feels like maybe the ghosts of my ancestors are haunting me.
Like, maybe I’m the designated survivor. The last storyteller of the family.
–
Since quitting my job as a librarian two years ago, I think I’m finally relaxing. Like truly, deeply - relaxing. Not quite Hawaii relaxing, but almost. As relaxed as I can be at this stage of my life. But it’s really only happened in the last two months.
Jim asked me back in May why I was stressing about the coaching and teaching and clients and the marketing emails and all of the distractions - and I told him, I feel guilty about not being able to create a sustainable income from my little business.
“So what? You left your job to write books.” He said it so simply, so matter-of-factly. Mister Scientist. Captain Obvious. The Dude. The only person whose opinion really matters to me. He knows my true heart better than I do, sometimes.
All of the other stuff?
“Bullshit distractions”, he said. “We’ve always been frugal. Nothing has changed. Just do your thing.”
So, I woke up the next morning and made a choice to just focus on the writing. Take care of myself. Take care of my family. Not worry about the rest.
I had to drop the fucking guilt about every goddamn situation in my life and stop worrying about what I cannot control.
Just do The One Thing. The writing. That’s it. That’s the answer.
Sweet relief, honestly.
Denying myself the relief of “just writing” was a kind of mental anorexia. The same kind of stress and heartache that led to a cancer diagnosis in 2016. And one thing I know for sure, a person cannot create while in a state of denial, fear, sickness, lack, guilt, shame, or anxiety.
It’s no way to live. And most of the time, we do have choice whether to exist in those energetic states.
So, these past two months, I’ve been purposely putting my needs first. Like, just the basics. More sleep. I’m getting back into a solid, daily creative routine. I’m finally - FINALLY - paying attention to my body and starting to move it again after years of neglect.
Flexible body = flexible mind. Blood flow = creative flow.
Instead of feeling bad about anything anymore, I’m doubling down. I’m too old for timidity or doubt. I’m releasing my old patterns and ready to to walk a new path.
Maybe through a jungle, in the rain.
I realized - I’m the Crone now. Time to live the life that’s been waiting for me.
Thanks for reading. More soon.
Have a terrific week.
- AMO