So it's been four years since I left Maui. It was a hard move but one I felt needed to be made, in order to pursue--or continue pursuing--my writing career. But, like, on a bigger scale than sweet, small-island Maui could afford...
I should probably explain something first. When I refer to "writing," I'm not saying that my ultimate goal is to publish a factory of bestselling novels, which I pen from the balcony of my delightfully luxurious Manhattan penthouse suite, from the luxuriously delightful desk of a strapping young man's taut and toned and creamy smooth backside.
Although, of course, that would be fine, too.
Writing, for me--at least the kind that I enjoy most--means that I get to deepen my experience of living. It means that whenever I enter a situation, meet a person, eat a meal, have an emotion, think a thought, travel somewhere, get a new job, talk shit about my co-workers (I mean, er, WITH my co-workers), go out on a date, visit the parents, have sex (um, not in their house or anything), I have this format through which I can process and examine and share, sometimes appreciate, sometimes laugh at, sometimes cry over, these experiences. And what's important to me, I've discovered, is the possibility and hopefully achievement of connection. Such a hokey word, I know. But I want people to read something I've written and either relate to what I'm expressing, or be inspired to look at their own lives or to go out in the world and discover that thing (or restaurant or person or sexual endeavor) for themselves.
And so anyway, for whatever reason, the simple act of returning to Maui has elicited yet another checkpoint for me--reminding me of why I left, what I had there on that magicaldysfunctionalbeautifullazy utopia, how far I've come (or not) and where I'm at now--as far as the writing dream is concerned.
To review, the past four years:
- I spent the first three months broke, unemployed, cold, haunted and perpetually in my ratty bathrobe.
- The subsequent three months I worked in a big, corporate daily newspaper by day; by night, vulnerable to the vagaries of living with my parents and/or running into ghosts of my past in the Southern California desert.
- A couple more months of voluntary unemployment, albeit happily back in San Francisco, before accepting a return to alternative newsweeklydom in Marin County, home of the rich and environmentally progressive-as-long-as-it-didn't-interfere-with-pilates-or-Botox-procedures.
- Eventual selling of writerly soul in order to accept a higher paying gig (AGIRLSGOTTAPAYTHEBILLSOK??) in the medical cannabis industry.
- Soon after, newfound freedom in the form of paid unemployment--this time, happily, with an understanding and supportive partner, slightly warmer (in the East Bay), unhaunted, more than occasional freelance writing and editing gigs, but still with that damn bathrobe...
Not necessarily the "bigger scale" I set out to achieve. But still, with its own simple, cyclical blessings.
...
OK wait a minute... Did I really just quote Beyonce up there in the title? See what the mainland is doing to me?? Either way, I don't wanna wake up. Ahem.
