climbing back into the box
Remember Paddington Bear?
The marmalade-loving, welly-wearing bumbling sweetheart found by the Browns at Paddington Station with a “please look after this bear” note?
Yeah. He was my main squeeze. Literally. I was given him at the age of five. Maybe six.
I loved that he was soft and gentle and sartorially splendid in said yellow rubber boots (that you could actually take off!), jaunty red bush hat and blue duffle coat. I loved that he loved elevenses and enjoyed two birthdays a year, “just like the Queen”.
But most of all, I loved our adventures.
We had a big cardboard box that transported us everywhere. We'd fly to the mountains of Nepal, the badlands of South Dakota, the outback of Australia and the moon. Obvs. At the end of every adventure, we’d cry “tally ho to Darkest Peru”. (Neither of us knew what the hell it meant. Which was more than fine.)
It felt cruel and unusual to hoard such delight from my loved ones, so Paddington and I would often reenact our adventures on the stage that was the living room after dinner.
Into the box we would climb and regale (ahem) our audience of friends and family with the sights, sounds, smells of our escapades and keep them rapt with our witty repartee (he was the naïve sillyheart to my sage straight man). And, always knowing how to keep ‘em satisfied, we’d ask them to shout out where they’d like us to go next. To Marrakesh! To Mimico! To Miami! And we’d see what we could see and get ourselves into scrapes, as only a bear and a little girl in a box could.
When it was clear that the audience had had too much of a good thing (my mother's wrap it up gesture and the guests' glazed-over countenance were the telltale cues), we’d “tally ho to Darkest Peru”, take our bow and retreat to my bedroom where I’d remove his boots, hats and coat (long since lost), and we’d rap about the performance and plan for the next day’s adventures.
In short: my parents were the most excellent kinds of parents.
They fostered my uniqueness, encouraged my creativity and celebrated my desire to express what was mine to express.
They engendered in me an inherent belief that whatever was being created in that box was good and valuable and worthy of witnessing. No matter how rambling, drawn out or, if I’m being brutally honest, entirely aimless it was.
I was worthy of their time and attention.
I’m thinking about my mother in advance of mothers’ day, as I always do. Missing her and her unconditional love. And I’m thinking about the kind of love my father had, and still has for me. And feeling completely and fully blessed.
And. This.
Even with the creative colostrum of support they nourished me with at such a young age, somewhere between that last “tally ho” and now, I had lost that innate sense of worthiness. I started to believe that there were rules I would never be able to fully grasp. That I was missing the heart of the artist. That it wasn’t my job to do. That creativity was for others.
Somewhere along the line, with the compositions, then essays, then theses, then proposals, then pitches, then video scripts, then sales copy then editorial calendars, then posts all written from a deep and earnest desire to be useful and helpful and heard, I lost the delight, the flutter, the adventure and the wonder I felt in that box, with my beloved bear by my side.
No where is this more apparent than in my book writing process.
I currently have 63,129 words written for my book on the Imposter Complex. Good, thoughtful, smart, helpful, useful, insightful words.
Words that defend the answer to the question: Who am I to write this book?
(The question is both internal and external. Agents want to know. Publishers want to know. But more viscerally, my own Imposter Complex wants to know, sneeringly derisively in the asking.)
So yes. Every last word is good and smart.
But I’m writing them from the wrong place. I’m writing them from my bubble.
It’s from my BOX that I need to write from.
Back to where I knew that innate sense of worthiness.Where I knew the enduring power of what’s possible.Where I knew that my heart had more to say than my head.Where I knew that joy wasn’t a nice-to-have. It was everything.
So that’s where I’m going now. Climbing back into the box. Ditching many of the 63K words and starting fresh.
Undefended. Leading with my creativity. Knowing that this is where the magic happens. And where there is magic, there is flight.
(Say hey to my newest writing partner, and oldest pal, Paddington.)
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