"Hey, William. Aren't you supposed to be updating every day? I noticed you didn't yesterday."

"Who are you and how did you get in here?"

"Oh, I'm sorry. I thought this was the post office"

"Ah, no that's a few blocks away"

"Right, wow, this is embarrassing. I'll just leave then, shall I?"

"Don't worry about it, happens all the time with you voices"

A beautiful afternoon here, the sun shining and the flickers warbling and trilling in the branches of the gnarled tree across the street. My windows are open. It's nearly 7pm and it's still light. And I've had really quite a momentous weekend.

I had a whole post planned talking about my weekend, but I suddenly just don't feel like it anymore. Instead, I'm going to try something new and be succinct.

There are voices that I hear in my head, as we all hear them. This weekend, I decided to start listening to one in particular, the one that has been trying to get my attention, but whose voice is relatively weak and somewhat beaten down. Secretly, I've known that this voice is one of the True voices, but I do so love the self-abuse that comes from silencing it.

Or did. Because if you don't try, you'll never fail. You'll also never succeed. In fact, nothing will ever happen.

As I listened to this voice, I also tried to bring almost to a complete halt all my brain processing and questioning and forward looking to consequence. And what I found is that I started going to bed and sleeping well, making really sudden creative plans with people, committing to projects that I am excited about but have no idea how they'll work, reading books (!), and basically filling up my space with the things I want to be doing.

It's an interesting feeling. In three short days, I'm now engaged in activities that I thought I needed to plan first, doing activities that I've been resisting and yet wanting to do, and am better able to shift on a whim. When I listen to that voice, I don't feel the weight of time, the urgency, the press of structure, or MOST important, the need to make anything that's good... or anything at all.

This goes back to the philosophy of a friend of mine, who once told me, "Inside, we know what's right and what's wrong. We just have to decide if we are going to listen to it."

What changed, and what I'd like to ask your support in reminding me, is that I've decided to allow myself the privilege of being flaky, of starting a thousand projects and never finishing them or even continuing them, of focusing so tightly in on a project that I do nothing else, or of changing my stream of direction, my mode of travel by the second.

And sure I've talked about this before, but in combination with the philosophy of spaces that I began recently, adding this approach back into the mix seems to have greased up gears.

The amusing potential side effect is that three times this weekend I've been flirted with. That may be the spring talking, but I think it's something more. When I listen to that voice, I have nowhere to go. I'm out, arms dropped, body relaxed, just doing what I'm doing until the next minute when I might be doing the exact opposite. And I think that's attractive (meaning it's an positive energy attractor that people respond to). I know it's attractive to me.

In addition to this was the final, hard-won, absolute acknowledgment that my life is busy. It's social, full of events and people and pursuits, full of work and domestic chores, full of plans for travel and growth, full of play and processing. It's never not going to be that way. Waiting for it to calm down means waiting until I'm dead.

If I want something to happen, anything at all, I have to make it happen. I have to plan for it, carve out the time for it, and know that doing it means not doing a hundred other things that I could be doing. And I also have to not be afraid of the power of that choice. Because choice is all I have in life.

I'm sure I'll falter in this as much as I keep to it, but it represents a second key to my process that I'm sure I'll always return to for resetting.

I'm done talking now. However, I failed in being succinct. That's awesome. Now I'm going to succeed in eating a big catfish sandwich and watching cartoons.