Do The Thing

Should I work hard today to have enough for "some day," or do today what I've always dreamed of?

Alaska in summer

Don’t put it off, she said. Go now.

We were talking about Alaska. She’d been - twice. I hadn’t. It’s on my bucket list, I said. Go, she repeated. Don’t wait.

I go back and forth between thinking that there’s all the time in the world to do everything I want to do, and knowing there are no guarantees. I am not destined for 100 years. Maybe. Maybe not. And if I put off all the Big Things I want to do, the places I want to see and know, the experiences I believe will touch my soul, there’s a chance I won’t ever get to do them.

It’s fatalistic, I know. Except one day at a time adds up to all the days. I have today. Right now. This moment. What am I doing with it?

Working like crazy to earn more money? Putting off a person or a project that would make me smile because I have to do THIS on the to-do list? The house needs cleaning. Groceries need purchasing, then cooking. I must sleep. Except some nights I can’t sleep and I lay awake in the gray-dark, thinking I should get up and do something with my alert moments but also wishing to fall back into the silence.

Cranbrook Natatorium - my favorite lap pool in Michigan

Then it’s morning, and I go to the pool and swim laps, and I’m glad I went. The lifeguards are playing my favorite ‘80s songs. It revs me up. I think of high school, which I loved, and the people I grew up with, who are mostly really good people, people I like seeing. I’ve had a good life. I’ve been fortunate. I am grateful.

I work harder than hard. Sometimes 7 days a week. Sometimes just another hour after dinner. Like the other night, when I finally had time to be alone with my husband and cuddle on the couch. Just one more thing, I said, and sat at the desk I’d been sitting at all day.

Shame.

I was 27 when I left employment and set out on my own. I wanted to feel the raindrops or the thick heat. I wanted to rollerblade down the middle of the street in the middle of the day. I wanted to make more money and I wanted to write for other magazines and newspapers and my editor at the place where I worked wouldn’t let me.

If you don’t try, you’ll always wonder, my mother said.

So I quit but not before negotiating a sweet monthly commitment to keep writing and editing as a freelancer. I worked at 7 a.m. and all day and many nights until the stars winked in the night sky. A man lived upstairs from me in an old house in Ferndale. Sometimes, I’d wander out to the backyard, which was lit by an incandescent streetlight. He’d be sitting on the picnic table with a beer bottle in his hand, and I’d sit next to him and we’d talk or just be silent together. He was a nice man. Looked out for me when I was young and impulsive.

I think this happened, but it might not have. It’s a good story anyway.

Late, I’d fall into my bed to the concert of crickets and a train screaming down the street from my flat. That summer, I was so worried about making enough money that I took a job waitressing at a bar-restaurant called Woody’s. I was very bad at carrying trays full of drinks on the top level roof bar, so I only worked that shift once. I was better at waitressing. I liked talking with the people at the tables, imagining what their stories might be, making them smile by bringing the right food. And late, after closing, I liked sitting with my coworkers and eating fried food because I was so wired from the buzz of working all night that I knew I wouldn’t sleep. I listened to their stories. I wondered what my life story would amount to.

By 2, I went home to the house that I owned by then, a little post-war bungalow in an old suburb, and I’d write because I was too awake to sleep in the lavender dawn.

That first year freelancing, I tripled my income. Saw a movie in the middle of the day. And yes, I worried I wouldn’t make rent, but then I did so well I bought the house, so it all worked out. And then I worried I wouldn’t make the mortgage, so I got scrappy and worked harder and took that extra job just in case.

It’s been 25 years since then and though I’ve considered once or twice (or more) how easy it would be to take a job and collect a paycheck, I haven’t acted on that urge. I like the freedom. The worry spurs me to work harder, and everything always turns out ok.

I’ve created and learned and grown and evolved so I could love my life and my work. I’ve been lucky. Privileged. I’ve also been shameless and pushy about learning from, well, everyone.

I approached Barbara Jones at the Iowa Summer Writers Workshop when she was an editor at Harper’s and asked if I could pay her to edit my essays. She charged me $10 a page and spent an hour and a half red-penning my prose. She’s still my friend and mentor. Sometimes I send her a thank you note, handwritten, or a gift basket. I am that grateful.

I paid a lot of money to study with Seth Godin and meet entrepreneurs from around the world. Hungry, innovative, eager to do things that everyone told us we couldn’t succeed at. He was a really nice guy and so smart. I soaked it all in.

When I lived in New York, I went to the weekly writers workshop in Greenwich Village hosted by a friend of a friend of my aunt. I took all the feedback on my little poems and pressed my way into friendships with writers so much older and wiser and more talented than me. It was the best year.

One chance. One life. Go now. Do the thing.

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