An Amalgamation of My Parts

letting my self be happy

I am the happiest I’ve been in a long time and I am afraid my happiness will make me a terrible writer.

Remember when I confronted my tendencies of avoidance to writing Field Notes because of my shame of feeling exposed? I seem to have found a different side to the same coin. Now that I am on the other side of several years of a series of unfortunate events, I feel like I don’t have as much to draw from in my writing arsenal.

I fear that if I am not continuously experiencing life in a way that deeply challenges me, in a way that rough and tumbles me like a stone in a rock polisher, then I’ll have nothing to write about. I am a researcher at heart, with a fire inside that burns brightest through experience. Experience that is meaningful, insightful, and transformative. I like to collect data and formulate and create some kind of beauty out of the chaos. If there is no chaos for me to transmute in to anecdotes full of magic and mysticism, from where do I draw my data? What happens to Field Notes? Am I still a writer? Was I ever one to begin with?

Writing about the chaos of my life has also created incredible bridges of connection. I’ve received a lot of feedback over the years of how me sharing my process has validated the process of others. The way my life’s nuggets of wisdom have completely changed me in the deepest parts of my core, in my heart of hearts, with no belief system left unturned or unexamined; sharing these aspects of my self has afforded others a bit more courage to do the same and feel a little bit less alone in the process.

It sounds a lot like I am asking my self who I am without chaos. I’m questioning if I’m addicted to it, or if I have an unhealthy attachment to it as the thing that is giving my life meaning. I’m asking if chaos is the identity of my writer self. If chaos is the voice and cadence and tone from which I write.

Basically, do I actually have anything to say or offer if I’m happy. Content. Satisfied.

I am well aware the questions I am asking about my writer self extends beyond writing and bleeds in to other areas of my personhood. There lives in me a general sense of fear that to experience my happiness or contentment in its fullness will subject me to more pain when the experience of those emotions or states of being are gone.

I know well the ebbs and flows and ever-shifting seasons of life. I don’t believe we are meant to remain in any one emotion or state of being for too long and that there is a broad spectrum of being human to be experienced. And I’ve spent so much time on one end of that spectrum the last several years that sometimes I catch my self wondering if feeling good on the opposite end of that is too good to be true.

I guess it could be to good to be true if I were to look at any point on that spectrum as “bad”. The time that I spent on the end of the spectrum that rough and tumbled me like a stone in a rock polisher has been the most transformative years of my life. They paved the path stone by stone, brick by brick, tear by tear, to be the version of me that I am so in love with today. A version of me that I am enamored with. A version of me that fills me with pride and utter adoration. I am the most capable person I know, beautiful, brave, full of heart, and strong. I have died to my self over and over and over again and fought for my self to birth many new lives. I am creating a life that I dearly love.

The gratitude I have for that path is beyond measure. It is weird to feel so undyingly grateful for so much death. But as I’ve said before, we are constantly being reborn, sometimes moment to moment. Death is intrinsically part of living. Of being alive. It is necessary to live a rich and fulfilling life. To die is how we go on truly living.

I often wonder if I honored those years and times and experiences enough. I regret spending so much time wishing I was beyond it all, how much time I spent wishing for better or more. Wishing I was elsewhere.

Interestingly, I feel grief for being beyond so much of that now. A lot of unexpressed love for the darkest of times. For versions of me that held me up in so much compassion, devotion, hope, and love. I guess the entirety of the spectrum is entirely what we make it. And if there is one thing the spectrum has taught me, it is that I am wildly worthy and deserving of good things. No matter what.

If I come back to Field Notes for a moment, I recognize that its nature has been an exploration of identity. A practice of asking questions and having the courage to answer truthfully. It has always been a place to safely look in the mirror and face that which is reflected back to me. Examining my relationship to chaos, identity, happiness, and evolution has never been a binary process. It has always been a process of amalgamation of all of my parts sans judgement or expectation of a categorization of good or bad, right or wrong, virtuous or evil.

And look at me. All happy and yet still asking all the questions. I’m still me it seems, if not more so.

All that to say, it is safe for me to allow the identity of Field Notes to shift as I do. A lot of suffering comes from a resistance to change and I am committed to my peace. To be in flow with where ever life has me. To be in surrender on the surfboard of life.

Everything has always worked out for me, 100% of the time, even when I thought I was doing something wrong or missing something. Even when I thought life was trying to kill me, I was always exactly where I needed to be. And if I can believe that about divorce, suicidal ideation, anxiety, depression, breakups, a business ending, unemployment, financial struggle, and all of the in betweens, I can rest easy in the presence of happiness knowing we’re to be in relationship for a while too. And that the relationship we cultivate will contribute to the creation of even more magic and beauty, and to the realization of how much is already all around me at all times. Even when I think it’s not.

Tallyho beautiful people,
Jenny