Chapter 87: Eclipse

I strut my leather-clad legs in spiked boots out onto the stage, mic firmly in hand, shoulders back, chest high, ready to kick some musical ass. The crowd is wild. The steamy summer air of the last four days has left a humid electricity in the air, and everyone is ready to cut loose.  The electric guitar starts screaming and now there’s fog everywhere. I toss a ridiculous pile of hair back and forth, channeling Dee Snider circa 1984. I’m a deranged Gollum running around onstage, standing on the amps, kicking, wailing. I blaze down the vocal line in an inferno of notes. I get to the money bit of the song and I arch my back and belt it, a banshee siren over the shrieking guitar. I leap out into the crowd…

 I prowl the stage at TedX handing out my fifteen minutes to the world. I am giving an impassioned talk about how you can do and be so much more than you think is possible. I am on fire, passionately and dramatically telling my story, and I can see their faces as it dawns on the crowd that maybe they can indeed actually change their situation for the better…

I am in the middle of a podcast with the team I have built. The guest today is hysterical, I have a waterfall of material to work with. Maybe I should have her on a second show. We have callers waiting on the line to ask their questions, I’m never going to get through all of them. This is an improv show designed for entertainment value, and thus have no need to do anything other than, well, entertain, so I am having an absolute blast. Next caller, please…

I am on the side of Mount Fuji, and my harness is chafing a bit as I go into hour 3 of climbing this sheer wall. I’m having a tough time finding any holds, nevertheless I look out at the beauty all around me and the canyon yawning beneath, and am grateful…

Welcome to the art of visualization. The more I learn, the more it  seems difficult to get anywhere without it. I think we all do some iteration of picturing what you want to be. During my awful span of school years, I wasn’t exactly what you would call cheerleader-popular, so I spent those lonely years  singing endless songs into a hairbrush behind my closed door, rewinding cassettes over and over until they became completely warbled. I gave that bedroom mirror the performance of a lifetime, again and again. When I get up on stage now, I’m pretty  comfortable because I’ve been there a thousand times already, in my head. It’s a powerful thing. Conceiving something before it is reality can convince your brain that it’s possible, and the neurological response is similar whether it’s an imagined event or a real one. And how exactly can something exist if you don’t think of it first, anyway? 

Visualization is not only powerful, but dangerous. People suffer when they can’t stop envisioning disaster.  It’s too easy to live in a state of constant fear, haunted by endless pictures of catastrophe. You have to fight it. My heart breaks for those trapped in this paralyzing existence, it’s not a good time.  

But I’m doing the opposite. 

I am systematically replacing the old life I had been living with the one I want. Call it This Old House, but it’s a life remodel.  I call it eclipsing, when the vision of who you want to be becomes bigger than who you are now. You keep that picture vividly in your mind each day, and your life will absolutely change. I will make the life I want so much bigger than who I am that the vision becomes my life. The new person eclipses the old, and eventually the old one winks out, a burnt out bulb replaced by a laser. 

I have a problem, though. I have too many directions, wayy too many things I want to pursue. My brain is not cooperating, it’s overwhelmed. This firehose of ideas has filled an Olympic pool in my brain  with m&m’s and every single candy coated and initialed piece is a different goal. 

I need help. I ask a group of people from Miami who have been staying in touch. 

They say I need a coach.

The phone dings out an electronic melody.  It’s Lastdude, my delicious distraction. Junk food, here I come. 

And I am off, going to meet him, even though he lives in another city, a time consuming venture at best. But what’s the harm? I hug him close and twine his long hair and inhale the smell of oil and exhaust. 

I know, I know. You’re going to do this again?  But I have myself convinced this is no biggie, a little sidebar, someone to hang around with to ease the alone time. It’s not like before, I’m not giving up anything… am I?? Every time BAD IDEA crosses my mind, I stomp on that sign and cross it out, saying this is just casual dating, what harm can it do? 

LastDude is the guy who kissed me in the rain, a romantic Velveeta visual straight out of a Hallmark movie. He’s an amazing mechanic, and an equally spectacular bass player. Mentally, I’m using these things to gloss over the fact he has little else to offer. I usually pay, he’s always stringing along, I am the one to schedule anything we do, in fact I’m fairly sure that if I stopped calling him, this would just end. Total maybe guy. Maybe he’s the one, maybe this will work out, though the blackened toilet in his unkempt apartment screams NO MONICA THIS WILL NEVER BE YOUR GUY. 

Come on, Monica. You know you can do better. He’s a decent guy, but a terrible match for you. 

But somehow I still don’t cut this off entirely. We aren’t exclusive and there is no commitment, so it feels safe. I still go out with my single friends, I’m maintaining my own direction. Lastdude talks constantly about a long-lost ex, which is kind of annoying, but I still get to go on dates with him and I’m having fun. 

This is fun, right? 

Having convinced myself this is harmless, I ignore the nagging feeling and begin searching for a coach. I am puzzled as to what kind of mentor to get. I’m going in a thousand directions, and for a moment I snicker at the visual of a whole room full of coaches, packed in and overflowing, one for each and every idea. 

In the end, the right person emerged out of the ether. In the group of folks I met in Miami, one guy stood out, an ultra marathoner with the energy of a squirrel on crack. This guy was going places, FAST,  and darned if he didn’t turn out to be a life coach. 

It was expensive. 

It was also totally worth it. 

I started my first high-energy rapid-fire conversation with him in the middle of winter, when in Wisconsin, we are just hibernating and waiting for it all to be over. January and February turned out to be the perfect time to overhaul everything, and I turned over all of my ideas to him. What was so priceless? 

I fed a thousand ideas into his little hopper of a brain, and he managed to help me get this hot mess narrowed down to three solid directions. 

THREE! 

I can do three! 

We’ve pared it down to performing music, business, and writing. As I work with him, there’s one little detail I fail to mention, never really bring up, I mean, is it really important? It’s nothing serious, just casual… until one day I let it slip. He has identified that I have a logjam with my time, and in his effort to help me succeed I finally fess up what I didn’t think was relevant, information I felt was unnecessary for a life coach to know.

Okay, fine, I’m still seeing a guy. Okay, so I don’t seem too excited about it. No, I’m not sure if this is going anywhere. 

He’s a solid Maybe. . 

Coach is not impressed. 

Then he asks one question that turns out to be the key to everything.