On Momentum

The moods swing from grateful comfort to blind, white rage. Half of the time, I'm so happy to be home. Tickled at the simple notion that I can lean over and give someone a kiss. That I have elbow room in the shower. That the chances of getting lost as soon as I walk out the door are very, very slim.

But then there's how I felt when I woke up this morning: rank with the desire to procure 100 lbs. of plastic explosives and detonate this vinyl-sided suburban hellhole and all it represents. The fact I have to pay triple for substandard cheese is the sole and necessary reason why I should get back on a plane to Paris. That jogging strollers are a blatant affront to my creative sensibilities and that my boyfriend, that supportive bastard, is holding me back.

Does all of this sound familiar? It does to me. The subtext of the previous paragraph is that of a whiny four-year-old and a high-pitched, "It's not faaaaaair!" So, I should shut the hell up. And turn all that poor-me energy into something else. Mental judo, or whatever that phrase was I coined the other day in the blog. Redirect.

I did my morning pages, writing lightning-fast to sneak past the bitchy gaze of a jetlag-addled Censor. I wrote about the blog. The next stage, refining the focus and all that. What is the point of it now that I'm back and how can I continue to add relevance to my twelve faithful readers' lives? (Hi everyone!)

Then the stream of consciousness changed focus to consider the messages I'd received in the past few days. Despite the fact that I've been in a kind of limbo, information is still flowing between the universe and me.

When she dropped me off at the airport, Dana the Artist left me with a final message: push it further. Take the writing and give it a shove. More extreme. Higher stakes. I realized that this blog was about not caring what other people think, but that's only the first step. The next step is to take what I think and push it further.

Yesterday, I received a perfectly timed email from Coach Ross. The first line told me to go for a run before reading the rest of the email. I ignored that and scrolled down the large-ish space he'd left underneath the first line. The second line read: Seriously Mel. Go running. I laughed my head off and laced up my shoes. My curiosity usually gets the better of me, but for whatever reason, I obeyed the instructions as given.

I went for a slow jog in the sunshine and I began crafting my next round of affirmations. Because I get to choose (we all do) what is next. I worked on ideas about success, about freedom. And about love. My tendency is to make Boyfriend the scapegoat – because I'm "stuck" with him and therefore stuck with Calgary, my career won't move forward. It's ungrateful and irrational, but it's where my mind goes. I might as well be honest.

As I was running, though, the realization came to me that I am not trapped. That freedom is already mine. Creative, financial, emotional, spiritual. I'm already free. I can write what I want when I want to. I know how to make money. I have someone's love and support, and a very strong spiritual life. If I imagine something is holding me back, it is. If I imagine everything is pushing me to grow, it is. It's all up to me.

This morning, out of nowhere Stephen Massicotte popped into my head. We went to university together and now he is living the dream, writing screenplays in New York. I ran into him 'randomly' in early March and couldn't figure out why he'd been put in my path. I've figured it out now. He holds the answer to my question of what's next.

Massicotte started in the theatre. He wrote a play that hit it big and launched him on the path. The play won awards and then he wrote another and another. Opportunity started flowing and away he went.

I may sell my screenplay next week. I may get into the Sundance Screenwriters Lab on my first try. Signor Producer may read the script, fall madly in love with it and start gathering a team. I don't know.

But what I do know, right now, is to start from where I'm at. My job is to write and make sure people 'see' my writing. I can write reams of poetry and stick it in a box like I've done for the past thirty-odd years. Or I can give my writing some air-time. Put it on a stage, on a television screen on a big screen, where ever I can put it. My job is to write things that people can perform, whether it's me performing or Peter Dinklage.

This has just, this moment, become clear.

Plays. Television. Short films, features. Even radio, why not? I start from where I'm at. From the things I know to be true. Writing and performing. These are things I know for sure. I look for opportunities to write. I write more plays, more films. I see if anyone I know wants to produce one. I see if any actors I know need a vehicle. I write and I give my writing air. I let it be seen and heard and experienced. I do what I do best. I stay right here, right now. No matter where that is. I do the work I've been called to do. And I keep doing it.