I’m posted at the end of a long communal table at a cafe in Monterrey. At the opposite end, a family of three is huddled over pastries, speaking in low tones. Across the room a baby sleeps in a car seat, rocked by her mother’s left hand. The right hand clicks through a laptop with ease. My eye has been twitching since the sun woke me up, rising through the glass door of our air bnb. The annoyance has now become a soft reminder that I am indeed within my body. Every so often I rub my eye and enjoy the stillness.
There’s some drama happening between the baristas and the cashiers at the cafe. I can sense restaurant spats from a mile away, like those animals who take shelter before an earthquake. Many years of high intensity restaurants taught me to scan body language: watch the hands of chefs, look for tension in jaws and chart the course of wandering server’s eyes. It’s worse when eyes stay locked in place, creating invisible streams of anger, ready to combust with whatever crosses its path.
In a restaurant, entire love affairs can play out through glances. If the smitten pair is bold enough, great distances will fall away as gazes intertwine. Infinity is no match for a bored hostess and a stressed out sous chef.
Anyway there’s definitely something going down here, someone isn’t coming in for a shift and once again the weight is falling on the employees who already over-perform.
Clearly this place has a reputation to uphold, a bakery with a long line in a sleepy town. Google reviews have ripple effects. Tourists with long lens cameras file in by the hour, grey haired women with book club energy, sporty couples with quiet euro accents who approach the pastry counter looking for avocado toast.
Now it’s time for me to leave, because their wifi isn’t for the public and I’m clearly too distracted reading the room.
We decided to take a road trip during a heatwave, heading up the coast with Berkley as our final destination. I guess this is my first real road trip, in that we have multiple stops and lots of time to meander. My cell service has been spotty for most of the trip, so the phone has fallen out of sight, out of mind. I reach for my point and shoot if I want to document. I feel forgotten in a good way.
Yesterday I did a live meditation on instagram (every Tuesday at 6pm pst) but first I had to find a location that offered both cell service and relative quiet. Our air bnb’s internet was out of commission, but I felt confident we could find a peaceful park bench somewhere. Turns out I’m still a naive optimist. I ended up diving into my car, propping my phone in front of a tin mug at the last minute. I was proud to have gone through with the meditation instead of backing down to imperfect conditions. But that defiant pride didn’t last long. A small voice of doubt crept in while I watched the sunset, ballooning into an overwhelming sinking sensation.
After all this driving and all this meandering and all this time to think, I was being swallowed by worthlessness. Instead of seeking a break from myself, I had to sit in the car and face the feelings as we drove up PCH. Tears streamed down my eyes, pulling out the emotions so I could form them into words.
Recently, I heard a podcast interview with Drew Barrymore. Usually this host warms into the conversation but Drew dove in right away, taking us all with her. She wasn’t shy about her struggles with an inner wrath. Drew Barrymore, the icon, the legend, wakes up everyday to a fresh set of demons. They come armed with new tricks to convince her that she’s worthless. Everyday, she tells us, she chooses to fight them off. It is always a choice that she has to make. Her honesty took me off guard and the conversation has been reverberating through me ever since. I’m no Drew, but for the first time in my life, I’m consistently creating and offering work to the world. While this has been liberating and fulfilling in many ways, it’s also brought me to my knees.
We were crawling along PCH, stuck in farmland rush hour. It was there I remembered what Stephen Pressfield talks about in The War of Art. You always hear the most successful people talk about feeling worthless, but it’s hard to believe them. How could they hold a sliver of self doubt when their glossy image is sold on a magazine cover?
Stephen Pressfield argues that this feeling is very real. Not only is it real, it is a war that we have to wake up every day and fight. We fight it by doing the exact thing the voices within are telling us to quit. These voices represent resistance, which seeks to hold us in the murky waters of unfilled existence.
Resistance appears in many forms, both internal and external.
If you stay out of the realm of passion, resistance will let you cruise. Every once in a while, it will happily remind you how hard it is out there. It will make sure you don’t try. But the moment you get up and see what’s all this then (read in a kooky british accent just for fun) resistance will activate and you have to be ready to fight.
I first read The War of Art during the last months of 12th grade. I furiously underlined sentences and ear marked pages. But I was more focused on the “getting started” part of the book.
In the past year, this deeply existential feeling has slowly encircled me.
It took this long PCH drive to identify exactly what it is. If you’re out really trying, you’re likely on the edge of the void, paving a way forward brick by brick. It can feel desperately easy to leap into the darkness and let go of everything. Some days, you can feel the darkness calling your name. Your actual name with social security and everything. It swears you’re meant to live within it, not pulling glimmers of light toward the brink.
For many years I’ve fought an external fight. I’ve given years to helping out ailing family members, getting them over the hump of survival. That all felt like a cakewalk, because it wasn’t personal. Nothing was coming for me. Now the call is coming from inside the damn house.
None of it is real, unless we choose it as reality. For too long I’ve toyed with the idea that it could, just maybe, be reality. I found myself bowing to this false belief of worthlessness.
From where I sit now, none it is real. I punctured an inflatable demon.
More will pop up to replace it, but at least I know all that’s inside is just hot air.
xx
James