having it all

Andrea Scher‘s post Having it All couldn’t have come at a better time. Lately, I find myself acutely aware of the ever widening gap between everything I want to do and the little time I have in a day/week/month/year/life.

Perhaps it’s the arrival of July that has me in such a frenzy. I feel like the rabbit in Alice in Wonderland, running around, mumbling to myself “Oh my ears and whiskers, how late it’s getting!” I haven’t done this and this and that and before you know it, summer will be over and we’ll be ringing in 2020 and my hair will turn white and then I’ll be dead. Melodramatic? Hells yes! With reason. This is my life and it’s passing by one speedy second at a time. And even though I try to live breath by breath, moment to moment, here and now… the passage of time freaks. me. out. y’all!

I think it boils down to this. Life is so rich and colorful that I want to live it all. I want to breathe it all in. I want to see, taste, smell, hear and touch everything at once. So much so that when I’m living one experience, I’m often simultaneously thinking about another one. I could be having the time of my life but a little part of me mourns those things that I’m not doing at that moment (imagine how amplified that feeling gets when I’m doing something unenjoyable).

When I’m writing, I want to be outside, out there in the world, living so that I may have something to write about. When I’m out there losing myself for hours with nothing but my camera and my wallet (should a soy latte or grapefruit & cassis gelato call my name – it can get pretty deafening, you just have to give into it), I fret over the fact that I’m not sitting in front of my computer writing. Call me a Gemini.

I suppose I’m just easily inspired, I get so excited about everything that I end up picking things up only to leave them in a corner to collect dust because I find something else to wonder about or I get discouraged at the time it takes to become really good at something (and secretly, or quite obviously actually, I’m afraid to fail). As such, I go through life taking little bites of everything. Samples, really. I guess you could say that I’m in the All You Can Eat buffet line of life (hold the MSG) and my eyes are bigger than my stomach.

So what a relief it was to read Andrea’s post in which she asks the question: “What does having it all look like in your world?”. I don’t think I’ve ever visualized having it all because the word impossible keeps popping up to obstruct the beautiful view. I want it all (and I’m not talking about the house on the hill and the Benz in the driveway and the bling on my finger), but I seem to want it all now and the only thing that gives me is a pit of anxiety in my stomach. So I felt about 10 pounds lighter after reading Andrea’s take on having it all: “What I really want to say is that I haven’t figured out how to have it all just yet, but I want to believe it’s possible. And for me, I suspect it’s about agreeing to having it all eventually, just not all at once.” Amen, sister.

Having it all means something different for all of us. I do think that for Tia, pictured above, it means getting that piece of string cheese in her belly and going for long walks and sniffing bums along the way and getting belly rubs and chewing on sticks and living with such a loving family.

For me, it goes something like this…

Being a gypsy for a few months out of each year, traveling to a different part of the world with eyes and heart wide open, a camera on my back and a notebook in my hand.

Having an eco-home to come back to, that smells like home and has cozy cushions and sheer fuschia and lime curtains blowing in the wind. Ideally sitting on a little self sustainable farm with a fruit orchard and a big organic garden where I could tend to plump tomatoes and ruby beets, barefoot, following the waxing and waning of the moon. Garlic braids hanging from shed rafters. Lavender fields and herb beds perfuming the air. Espresso in the sunroom by morning, blogging away on my laptop and wine on the patio overlooking the lake at night, laughter echoing through the forest. Midnight skinny dips and cold wakeup swims at 6am (hopefully to the sounds of loons calling). Chickens laying eggs and goats to milk. Wild medicinal plants to make salves and lotions and tinctures. Many dogs running around and cats lounging. Popcorn à volonté.

I want to be a yogi in body, mind and spirit, which takes much dedication to the practice but I’m also not an extremist… this yogi will probably drink wine on her death bed. I want to wear fisherman’s pants and patchouli on my wrist as I read a book in my hammock but also want to don the little black dress for a night out on the town. I want to have girl retreats and solo road trips. I want to be a kick ass photographer, environmental activist, digital artist, travel writer and farmer. I want to learn Spanish and Italian, spend days creating, make art journals, sew my own clothes, find my own voice, learn to play the bongos and jam with friends, go rock climbing, take salsa and hip-hop and belly dancing and Nia classes, learn to ride a motorcycle, own a vineyard and make my own wine, go to music festivals (Burning Man once in my life, I hope), hula hoop, do 10K races through the forest, spend time in nature every day, play in the kitchen dehydrating raw treats, making bread, canning jams and jellies and salsas strait from the garden, cook yummy healthy meals for a man I love with all my heart, have dress up parties and corn husking gatherings with family and friends, and finally learn to meditate so that I can recognize each of those moments as they arise in my life without wishing, hoping or thinking about anything else.