Nine Lives

Watching this three year old girl board a plane to Hawaii a couple weeks ago, I was brought back to a time I was that small on a plane.  Helping the flight attendants serve drinks.  Sporting those little plastic wings on my shoulder.  Getting a tour of the cockpit during flight.  Back when their doors were open.  So much has changed.  Not just in the world of aviation but in the world of that fearless little traveler with the pink backpack and long blond hair.
I’ve spent the first summer in six years not on the road.  I realize that in writing this I’ve just returned from a week vacation in Hawaii and will be leaving for Black Rock City in a matter of hours, but this summer for the first time in a long time I’ve decided to forgo the itch to move, the need to dance and the love of festivities for something more.  I’ve spent the last four months working almost every day on the novel I thought I’d completed a year ago.  After letting it sit for eight months it was an entirely new game.  It’s grown another hundred solid, fine-tuned pages and the more work I do on it, the more work I can see needs to be done.

I’ve fallen in love.  Allowing myself to follow my heart into a kind of solitude to work has allowed a kind, loving and talented man to find his way into my life.  Always when you least expect it, they say.  I don’t know what the future will bring.  I am tumbling down a steep path of transition this month but I trust that as the path unfolds out of the dark before me, I will continue to find light.
Next week will be my ninth consecutive year at Burning Man.  I will burn the past and light the future once again.  Burn the heartache and unworthiness.  Burn the fear of success.  Burn the loss of loved ones.  Burn anything keeping me from evolving into my highest self.  Great things are coming.  Big colorful magical things.  And now is the moment that we get to live inside of with love, gratitude, hope and inspiration.  I have lived so many ways and so many places.  I am utterly thrilled to see what more this life will bring.