Taking Time To Live

Funny thing about taking time to live.  More stuff gets done.  It’s like pulling your feet off the brakes, and putting them on your handlebars, like you did when you were a kid. And just rolling with it.

And, that process allows for magic.  Hey, I’m a journalist, and I observe magic all the time.

I’m at the Oregon Coast.  I can’t tell you the last time I broke away from my long list of to-do’s, and my sense of lacking money.  Probably three weeks ago, I printed up my 375-page manuscript, pulled out a brand-new red pen to edit the crap out of it, and there it sat.  Chelsea Cain, in Workshop, commented that I should just go somewhere where I’d never been, and bring the thing – not try to edit it at home, amid the dings, pings, and stacks of post-it notes with ideas, details, and things-I-must-do-now.

So, I put it out there.  Much like a dandelion wish, where you blow, and it’s carried away.

I also, many months ago, wished for an all-expense paid trip to a sunny place, knowing that that would probably have to be a plane trip somewhere.

Well, guess what.  4am Friday morning, I’m on a list of people who gets an email from a friend who happens to have trade at a wonderful hotel on the Oregon coast.  Lodging free, and more than enough script to cover my non-alcoholic, sweet-loving ways.  She can’t use it.  Use it or lose it, she wrote – who wants it?  I put in.  I got it.

I brought a small bag of clothes; my manuscript; and I remembered when I arrived, after a beautiful sunny drive, that if somehow I needed a bathing suit, I always carry one in my purse.  Hey, you never know!

I stayed in flow.  Didn’t fight the river.  Didn’t set any alarm.  Smiled a lot.  Laughed even more.  Said thank you thank you thank you all day long.  Because today was bikini weather!  Very warm and sunny, and I sat out on the deck overlooking the ocean, editing my manuscript all day long.  Except for a couple of long walks at the ocean’s edge, in bare feet.  Heaven.  I finished the edits.  My skin is sun-kissed.  And, those post-it notes didn’t nag me one bit.  Relaxing into one of the few sunny days I’ve ever experienced at the coast, it occurred to me that when you put those desires out there, and you don’t worry them, you just let them float aloft like a helium balloon, they get answered so creatively, you could never have imagined it this way.

Stunningly delightful.  I love living.  And, no, I’m not posting the picture of me in my bikini, editing out on the deck.  I ate oysters, burgers, scallops, french fries, creme brulee – too much!