Remember

I am currently writing a book. It’s my fourth or fifth attempt at chronicling the events that have occurred over the last five years of my life. Those events have taken me from a conversion experience to very heavy involvement in a church to leaving said church to the overwhelming feeling that there is something I’m supposed to be doing to the realization that I want to be a writer to reading every self-help/self-realization book and website known to man to wanting to be a life coach to wanting to start an online small group development resource hub. And back again. In the words of The Grateful Dead, What a long strange trip it’s been. To say the least.

The problem with the book(s) has been that I don’t really want to write a book. Interesting discovery, huh? It’s true and anyone who knows me will not be surprised to learn why I do not want to write a book. It's because I don’t have the patience for it. A book requires a very long, coherent, step-by-step, beginning, middle and end. And here’s the thing, while I have been keeping a journal (on and off) for the better part of five years, I’m finding it extremely difficult to fully describe this wild, mystical, awe-inspiring journey that I’ve been on without continuously overusing the words “wild”, “mystical” and “awe-inspiring”. Additionally, sometimes in retrospect, the whole thing doesn’t make much sense.

It’s much more natural to come here frequently and write short little narratives which record the expedition while it’s still in motion. In actuality, if you were to take a lot of what I’ve written on Rambling Shmee and combine it with what I wrote on The Boat (decommissioned online women’s group), you’d have a pretty good narrative of my trek. OK, you’d want to leave out the mismatched shoes episode and Tuck’s epic bee battle but besides those, I’ve really already written my story. These are the thoughts that led to my latest epiphany. As I’ve struggled with writing the most recent version of my book, I’ve once again entered the land of Doubt and Frustration. (Hello, old friends.)

Everyday, I read a couple of fun and innovative marketing blogs (Seth Godin and Hugh McCleod) and everyday I am inspired to do some outside-of-the-box marketing for myself. There’s just one problem: I don’t have a product to market. I don’t have a book; I’m not a life coach; I don’t have a widget to take to production. I’ve got a bunch (think: WAR AND PEACE multiplied by the first draft of the HOLY BIBLE) of short stories, anecdotes and analogies that I’ve created over the last three or so years along with four unfinished, incoherent versions of a book that I hate writing. That’s it. How do you market that?

For the next five weeks, I’m going to be participating in a group coaching session with life coach Melissa Foster. When I signed up, I didn’t really know why I was doing it. It was pretty inexpensive, as compared to one-on-one coaching, and I thought I would just roll with it and see where it took me. I didn’t really have any preconceived notions or desired outcomes I was looking to obtain. In true Shmee form, I was just planning to blow around in the wind looking for inspiration and/or direction. And that probably would have been exactly how things progressed if it weren't for the “life coaching” part. Life coaches have agendas. Their job is to get you from Point A to Point B. Oops.

So, when Ms. Foster emailed and asked all the participants to provide an answer to the question, “What do you want?” as well as a statement of our intentions for the group experience, I panicked a little. What was I supposed to tell her? I wasn’t feeling too good about sending her the statement, “I want a product to market.” or, “I intend to find an excuse to flit around for the next five years until I accidentally stumble into a writing career.”

As I sat at my desk with my head in my hands, staring at the unidentified goo on my desk, repeating “What do I want?” over and over and over again, I remembered something that I had written a long time ago. Right after The Overwhelming Feeling That There is Something I’m Supposed to be Doing period and The Realization That I Want to be a Writer phase, I had answered this very question during a similar ritual. I paged through three old journals before finding the illusive answer that I somehow can’t manage to hold in my memory. There, written in my all but illegible scrawl, under the recurring question of my life (What do you want?) was the answer I ultimately sent to Melissa… I want to have a career that involves working from home and writing short, funny, insightful pieces that help and inspire others. And my intention for the five weeks of group coaching? My intention is to develop a plan, with action steps, to get what I want (see specific writing career described above). In other words, I intend to develop a product that I can package and market and, God willing, SELL!

Once again, I’m being reminded and guided. Just when I was about to give up (again) and start blaming my lack of a college degree and my age and all my responsibilities for my inability to get what I want, I remember with crystal clear certainty that I am still, more or less, on a path. When the lights go dim and I have a hard time finding the next step it is not a sign to turn back or to give up but rather a signal to look even harder for the bread crumbs. The road twists and turns and sometimes doubles back to the beginning but it is a definitely a path, intended not only to take me to a specific destination, but also to teach me lessons and provide me with opportunities to share what I've learned.

Sometimes the light's all shinin' on me;
Other times, I can barely see.
Lately it occurs to me ...
What a long, strange trip it's been.