Reaching My Vacation Upper Limit

I’m 1800 pages or so into my third read of my favorite fiction series of the last five years, Jacqueline Carey’s Kushiel's Legacy series, featuring the courtesan turned spy, Phèdre nó Delaunay.

Goodness, how I love me some trashy romantic historical fiction. Throw in fantasy and I’ll read, read, read. This series is especially good because there are THREE epics, all of the same length. Kindle tells me I’m only 80% through the first, which is such a spacious place to be.

Spaciousness is a big theme in my life at the moment. A few years ago, while sitting in a shamanic ceremony, riding the heart-opening wave of Huachuma (a cactus in the Peyote family that’s also known as San Pedro), I asked for spaciousness.

“I want to write,” I said, kneeling in front of the fire, looking into the shaman’s glittery eyes. Specifically, I was seeking more space in my life for writing. At the time, I had accidentally crafted a life that was wildly out of alignment and nothing about my days felt spacious.

She poked and prodded, looking to see if there were any fears or limiting beliefs keeping me from writing, then reached the same conclusion I did: there was no fear around writing or publishing, no trying to hide or wanting to avoid being seen. There was a lifestyle ill-suited to the task, given that I was on the retreat trying to prevent a descent into full-fledged burnout.

I told her that Sam had accepted a job in China and, once we got there, I wouldn’t be working. That I’d step down from leading the company I started and, in our new expat life, I’d have wide-open days. I wanted writing to be a big part of those days.

Peter Drucker, the famous management consultant and thought leader, once told Jim Collins, the author of Good to Great, something fascinating: you can either build a great company or great ideas but not both. You have to choose.

In that ceremony, I chose the path of ideas. And the beautiful shaman blessed the path, sending my “may I please have a more spacious life in order to write?” petition to the heavens on a cloud of cedar-scented smoke. Then, lo and behold, the spacious life I asked for became mine. It took another year or so, but I got exactly what I asked for. Please, please, please: should you ever find yourself in front of a shamanic fire, use your words responsibly. What you ask for, you tend to get.

Now do you want to hear the link between this all?

In my trashy, romantic historical fiction, there’s a scene where Phèdre, the aforementioned courtesan tried spy, turns to her bodyguard turned consort and says:

“Joscelin Verreuil, I would die without you.”

“Probably.” He smiled again. “Of melodrama, if naught else.”

Without Joscelin, Phèdre would die “of melodrama, if naught else.”

Now, let’s change characters. Imagine you’re Sam, up bright and early on a snowy vacation morning, returning to the bedroom around 8:00 AM, wondering where your early-morning-loving wife is.

And you find her, tangled in the seventeen cozy blankets she hauled to bed the night before, dramatically sighing.

“I can’t do this anymore,” she says, flopping down while sighing even louder.

The Shrek-Thor-Wolfgang-Keely branch of Carneys are delightfully dramatic, in case you didn’t know. It’s one of our many gifts, like having a morbidly twisted sense of humor.

In that moment, when I was likely to die of melodrama if naught else, the “this” I was referring to was vacation. I couldn’t do vacation any longer. I couldn’t handle another night of twelve hours of sleep, followed by brunch, followed by taking in beautiful nature and whatever other vacation-y things were on my plate.

I’d signed a contract with the Universe and, when I did so, my fingers became perpetually itchy. Jenna Zoe, a Human Design expert and one of my spiritual teachers says, “Once you find the thing that you love that you’re also good at, you actually want to spend time doing it. If you paid me to go sit at the beach for a year, that would feel like torture. What people forget is that we want to work less when we’re doing work that doesn’t excite us, work that isn’t our thing. When you find the work that IS your thing, you want to do it. It becomes a pathway to flow, a means of connecting to Divinity. You feel so good doing it that you naturally yearn for that time.”

So here’s me saying that vacation’s been great. And GOODNESS have I missed writing.

Send Sam prayers, if you’re the praying sort. I have no intention of any less melodrama and the holiday season is upon us, which means he’ll get days on end with the whole Carney crew.

P.S. Please note that I’m not pushing the workism agenda. That thing you connect to that you yearn to do on a daily basis? You don’t have to be paid for it. It doesn’t have to be your job. Please don’t ever let anyone tell you that it does. That’s a lie that’s making our culture very sick and it’s important to stop believing it (in my opinion, at least).

Want to be notified when I publish new stories or have exciting updates to share?

Sign up here.