More Instructions for Life

Act on your highest excitement. To the best of your ability. With no insistence on the outcome.

A walk in Ohio’s Mohican State Park on my 40th birthday.

Last week, my sister’s husband forwarded me an email, from me, from 6 years ago.

The subject: “Instruction for Living an Adventurous Life.”

It was a post from my blog GiveLiveExplore, from 2019.

It quoted the late poet, Mary Oliver:

“Instructions for living a life: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.”

It mused on the importance of paying attention to our lives, the act of deliberate noticing, and how writing is a powerful tool to do that.

Reading that post made me feel some kind of way. A complex stew of excitement and surprise mixed with grief and shame. Excitement knowing I wrote that. Surprised that my own writing stirred me. Grief knowing I stopped. Shame under the heavy weight of irony: I’ve been running a writing community for five years but not really writing.

It’s always hard to know where to begin when writing and sharing your writing again. So perhaps I’ll start here:

There’s this alien I follow.

(Stick with me...)

Instagram’s algorithm foisted his videos upon me one day, and like a chump, I took the bait.

The extraterrestrial named Bashar, channeled by the human Daryl Anka, holds channeling sessions where people ask him their biggest, deepest questions, and in a trance-like state, he answers. Or rather, answers spill out of him.

Is he really channeling an alien? I don’t know. Even Daryl doesn’t know. He says he can’t prove if the ET he channels actually exists, or if he’s just puppeting his own subconscious or a collective unconscious (or vice versa).

But the information that spills out has been helpful to him in his own life, he says, so he’s learned to trust that.

I’ve probably watched a hundred of these Bashar snippets. First I watched for the shock factor. His body jerking, his accent somewhere between Irish and Klingon. Then I watched with a slant, judgy eye. When will he contradict himself? When will he crack and get exposed as a fraud?

Increasingly, I watch for curiosity. And for hope. Will he say something I need to hear? Will he comfort me in the way I’ve chosen to live my life? Will he give me instructions on how to live?

That’s what most people want to know. People often ask him a variation of “what should I do with my life?” or “how do I know I’m on the right track?” They’re looking for instructions for life.

Consistently, for 30 years, he answers with a variation of what he calls “The Formula”:

Act on your highest excitement.
To the best of your ability.
With no insistence on the outcome.

Excitement, of all the emotions, is one I’ve learned to trust the most.

Sometimes excitement smacks you in the face, an adrenaline-pumping, blood-stirring ‘HELL YES.’ Or it feels like love: a butterflies-in-your-stomach, middle school infatuating spark. Often it’s more subtle, and whispers: a meek voice, barely audible. Sometimes it’s cryptic: potent dream images or uncanny encounters in waking life.

Excitement can go unnoticed. It requires being attentive, observant, and open enough to listen.

This, I remember, is why I write.

Writing is a tool for paying attention. For noticing our lives. For listening to, and encouraging us to act upon, our deepest excitement.

Why we write is similar to why we walk, why we swim, why we travel. Why we spend time with friends and share meals with loved ones. We write for the same reason the sun feels good on our face and marveling at a mountain nourishes our soul. It’s good for us. It does us good. We need it, like breath.

For someone who’s never journaled, never sat down to truthfully express how they feel, never tried to get to the bottom of what they think, who’s never asked themselves a question they didn’t know the answer to and spent time fumbling through an answer, they might not get it.

But for those of us who write, we do.

I know the dance of creation, the way of the muse. It starts with being attentive to excitement. It rewards unfettered action in the direction of that excitement.

Reading my old writing stirred something in me. Something from my past, but also, I have a hunch, something calling me from my future.

So when I felt that excitement, mixed with grief, reading my old writing, I knew I had to act.

To the best of my ability.

With no insistence on the outcome.

It’s nice to be back.

---

A few other life updates and thoughts…

Since it’s been a while, I thought I’d share a few updates for the curious.

• I moved back to Ohio after almost 9 years in the United Kingdom. I haven’t permanently lived here since I left high school at 18.

• Bought a house in my hometown and have been working to make it a space of creativity, inspiration, and comfort - a real home. Surprised at how much I’m loving this new adventure.

• London Writers’ Salon, the side project I started with my friend Parul in 2019, has flourished into full-time business and growing community. It’s virtual and global, enabling me to move back to Ohio, while staying connected to the world. In many ways, I’ve been wanting to create something like this for over a decade. It’s a source of both deep meaning and creative fun.

• Writers’ Hour – our live, virtual, silent hour of writing – welcomes almost 1,000 writers every weekday. If you write, you’re welcome to join us.

• We’re also publishing weekly creative writing prompts here on Substack at

  Writers' Hour Magazine
  .

• I’m not sure where my writing will go, but eager to find out. Things I’m feeling called to explore:

  • Lessons learned (and learning) on building a mission-led, community-based business focused on creativity and writing.

  • "Creative Health.” Akin to physical or mental health - what if we viewed time spent in creative acts as important to our health as individuals and as a species?

  • My deepening pull toward the natural world - am I a budding naturalist?

  • Travel, culture, place and home (always drawn to this)

Thanks again for being here.