The Point is to Get Lost

I've created lots of rules for adventuring for myself over the years.  Try a new coffee shop a day.  Taste test all the burger joints in a new town.  Ways to turn the overwhelm of being in a whole new place with no anchors into a million little games.

The beauty of gamification is it takes all the pressure off. There is no need to have "the most amazing experience."

I'm trying to figure out how to bring the same sense of adventure, where getting lost always leads to the most unexpected discoveries - to my creative projects, where I still put so much pressure on myself to know into the future how everything will turn out. Where I'm fighting the engrained desire to be perfect, to deliver what I think others want, to know what it will all mean in the end.

Which, ironically, is the opposite of creativity. Those pressures are one way we stifle our own creative impulses, because they are always a launch into the unknown. A surrender to the unseen. An act of faith. 


Pssst.... now you can also watch the episode on YouTube !

Come check out the Hot Mess series on TikTok, and watch as I lose my mind - and find it again - writing, producing, and acting in a show!

#CreatingIsHealing🦋

Transcript

Hi my friends. I am laughing at myself because I'm literally sitting here procrastinating because I don't feel perfect and ready to start, which is exactly what we're talking about tonight. Um, welcome back to be your own damn youth. And that's so interesting because it makes me think I had this great writing teacher who said that if you're whatever you're writing about is going to show up in your life. So if you're writing like a depressed script, don't be shocked if you find yourself feeling depressed. And if you're going to write something where there's a lot of energy and panic, you might also be feeling that. And so I don't know, chicken or egg, which starts first. Maybe you were writing something or sharing something that resonates with us, or it's just putting a spotlight on something that we feel. Um, but laughing at myself as I start this? Uh, that? That is very much what I struggle with and sort of my soul. Not soul, but one of my biggest. Um. Purposes or reasons for showing up on this podcast is because my perfectionism is so entrenched in my desire to do things. Type AA Plus student all the time really prevents me from being messy with the things that I make. And I know from all the reading and nerdiness that I am that that is one of the big barriers to creativity. And so I'm. Challenging myself by showing up here. And what I want to talk about tonight if you guys are following last week's episode. I have left my apartment in Brooklyn, my very long time beloved apartment in Brooklyn, and I am hitting the road and trying out different cities by living in Airbnbs for the next year. Which is so freaking thrilling. And I realized that I've got I've travelled quite a bit in my life and I wasn't always a good traveler, so I've taught myself a ways of adventuring. So what I call it sort of like games that I play. And some of those 

also expanded during the pandemic because we were working from home all the time and I needed reasons to get out of the House to combat my own anxiety about what was happening in the outside world, and just to get out of the House for my own sanity. Anyway, we've all these games and rules that I play. For myself, and I was just thinking about how good I am at adventuring in the world and that I was thinking the other day that. Often the point is to get lost. That I am, let me circle back so. Couple of my rules are one of them is always find a new coffee shop to try out. During the pandemic it was like literally every morning just walk in a different direction. In Brooklyn, you'll probably find a coffee shop when I'm in a new town or city that I don't know God has blessed GPS because I can pull up my phone pretty much anywhere and look at all the places around me and even see their menus and see their hours of operation and see how far close they are. And it's a really fun game for me because I feel like it inserts you immediately into the culture of the place that you live if you don't go to local Starbucks. Although even those are interesting because most of them are inside grocery stores called Ingles around here. So that's fascinating as a chain. But if you look at the local coffee shops, and I love showing up and seeing what's the seating like? Who are the people? Is it a workspace? Is it a hangout space? What's on the menu? Do they have gluten free cookies? Like the whole thing is. This research, and I think for me, when it becomes research, there's a lot less pressure to know exactly like even to like the place, like to pick the perfect place to show up. Because I'm not trying to find, I mean, I am trying to find my perfect coffee shop, but it's in a Goldilocks sort of way, which is you try out all the cold, hot. And medium to figure out which one is your right fit. And so when I turn things into research projects, it makes it so much easier to show up and be like, oh, actually that has all bar seating, which drives my back crazy, and it's all like angles and stuff. And I couldn't sit there with my laptop for very long or I don't really feel like I can write because it's very noisy 

or. You know the. The crowd is like really fun and cool. They feel creative around them. Like, all of those things are really great to check out and you don't know them until you show up. So I make it this project to try out different coffee shops and I so I was living in a different suburb of Asheville last month and there was a coffee shop. I've done like most of them in that area, and there was one that I hadn't found and I had it on my list and I was like Friday afternoon and I was like, OK. I'm going to find this coffee shop and the other thing I got to explain is I have not lived in a suburb in a very long time, like since I was a teenager. And GPS is amazing except if you're driving along a busy like two way St and if you get in the left lane you have to turn left and. The right lane keeps disappearing in Asheville, which is the thing that happens on the highway. So you have to really be paying attention what lane you're in. And GPS suddenly tells you you're there. And you look to your right, to your left. You can't see any numbers, you can't see where the building is, you have no idea. What they really mean is if you take a turn around this next corner and get into the parking lot, you will find where you are going. But that's not what GPS says should GPS says you have arrived? And I'm always in the middle of a road with traffic behind me and I can't stop. I try to slow down, but I can't stop in the middle of traffic and look and try to. And the building I'm looking for so. I was trying to find this coffee shop. I'm driving along this street that is so packed. There was like some kind of truck that was stopped, stuck up ahead and it was a Friday afternoon and it was after school traffic, but it was busy, extra busy for even a busy road. And I drove by and said you are here. And I looked around and I could not for the life of me. I kept driving. I pulled a YUI. I came back, I looked again. I still couldn't see it. I was like, this is insane. So I gave up that day I was like, I'm going to the coffee shop that I know that is super cute. That is open, we'll do this. The other day, when it's not so busy and I can drive and like, stare, it does help to have out-of-state plates anywhere that you are. I think Florida plates are the best because I assume 

that they think that, you know, I'm older and I might be a slower driver, so I feel like slowing down with Florida plates is the best. But New York plates are probably a second best because I also feel like they don't want to mess with the New York driver. Borough, cardless. They can see by my plates that I do not know where I am. So I left this coffee shop and this attempt to find this and I went back a couple of days later. This Sunday and kind of same thing. I actually think this time I looked at a map and I was like, what the hell is GPS trying to tell me? He tells me that I've arrived and I looked and I realized that there was a whole section behind what was front facing to the road. So if you drove around and parked in the parking lot, that's actually where the coffee shop was and you couldn't see any of that from the front side of whatever the the street that I was driving. So I'm like, OK, I prepared, so I go back. And I tried to find this place, and I can't. But what I do is I turn off that main road, the block before, knowing that there was going to be some kind of a parking lot behind it. And I cannot find the parking lot for the life of me. But what I do find is there's a glass blowing place behind it and then I keep going as streaks. I can't find parking and don't know where to go. And I realized there was an entire row of like really cute, really cool artistic shops with handmade pottery and handmade lotions and handmade candles and these really amazing local vendors are all in this back street that I had no idea about that we're not on the Main St. And so it's like falling down the rabbit holes like Wonderland. It was so cool. And so I realized this is amazing. And I end up finding parking on that street and then and then looped around back to the Main St essentially spent like 4 hours, maybe 2 hours walking around all of these incredible. It was like a couple blocks square of all of these spaces that had all of these really great artists. Shops and at the end of my 2 hour walk I come back to the place I started from and find the damn coffee shop. And I was like, oh, that's where it was. I 

walked in. I realized it's way too cold. I realize I don't want coffee by that point it's too late in the afternoon, but I accomplished my mission. But what I found was so amazing. What I found consistently is if I set a point on my GPS and I go and if I get lost along the way, or if I go and it's not the right thing. Usually there's a thing right next to it that is deeply interesting. There's a really cool. Discovery that is an off road thing I didn't even know about and I end up on this like really sweet adventure where. There was a plan, but the plan was really just a reason to get out the door and discover stuff. And so I make this a game, and I notice that I'm doing it a lot. And it's especially fun when I'm in a new town to just keep trying to go places and see where I end up. And the reason I'm bringing it to the podcast is I just realized the discrepancy between how good and comfortable I've gotten doing that in like real life in travelling and trying out restaurants or coffee shops or new hiking trails, any of that stuff. And how much I suck at it as an artist. How much the idea of not knowing exactly where to land and what it should look like and how people are going to feel about it and whether it's right or wrong completely paralyzes me. And. I was talking to a friend recently and and I think they brought up this idea that you sort of launch a podcast without knowing where it's supposed to go. Maybe gets you in a great conversations with collaborators we're really excited to be with. Maybe gets you into in front of an audience that you're really, you know, didn't even know existed. A group of people who want to hear you speak, like maybe gets you into writing more and you end up writing a book. I don't even know but this idea of letting go of the end result and showing up for the thing that you are in process of now. Is a muscle I am building. It is definitely a muscle I've built for traveling, for adventuring because I didn't have that I used to get really stressed out about. What if I go actually a couple years ago. If I go to the 

hiking trail and I don't like it or I'm not, I don't have the proper boots, or it's higher, you know, more of an incline than I'm ready for. Or I run out of food or run out of water. Like my anxiety brain would really get over overwhelmed and try to solve for all of these things that it was worried might be a problem. And so I built these really wonderful ways to travel. And one of the rules also is like if you don't like it, you leave, which might not seem revolutionary to most people, but to me it was like I again. I remember it took me until my 20s to realize that if you start a book reading a book and you don't like the book, you can stop reading the book. I thought no, it's a commitment that I've made. I've started this book. I'm going to read this book. I'm going to finish this book, even if it's driving me crazy. Um. And. And so I'm, I'm you know, a plus student if I'm going to do. Something I get stubborn and I and I want to stay and do it. And so this idea of also research, I'm here to feel what it's like. I'm here to have a cup of coffee, I'm just here to spend 30 minutes writing and then I get to leave and I'm done is really freeing. And I think the same thing can apply to creativity. You know, where have we lost this idea that I'm going to try this thing and maybe it won't work? Or maybe it'll be really interesting and I have no ******* idea why. It just is. It just scratches an itch. It just makes it interesting to show up on a Tuesday. It's just. Makes me more connected to people. I don't have to have a grand plan for where this is going to workout. And I've always struggled with this, especially as an actor, I've always felt. I wanted to know where my career was going to be 20 years from now and reverse engineer, what acting roles and what directors and what projects I should go for now to figure out how to get there. And I cannot do that. I don't think anyone can. But I think, especially in an artistic career, there isn't that plan. You know, if you're a lawyer or a doctor, you might have a real sense of like where you can go on the hierarchy of things, where your job might lead you and what your plans are. And it's not the same in creativity, you know, it could still be 

I'm going to release an album or I'm going to write a novel, or I'm going to, you know, audition for a bunch of films and or make my own projects. But there's so much that is out of your control, which is exactly why I struggle with it. There's so much that you cannot say this is going to happen. I'm making that my goal, and it will happen. And so. I I find that paralyzing. I find that not knowing what this will lead to, what I'm attracting into my life, what possibility good as well as possibility of, you know, it failing. Like. Both of those are actually really terrifying. The brain is terrified of all things it cannot, it has never done before because it cannot guarantee you will survive that. So even if it's a good thing, your brain is going to tell you. Abort get out of there. So um, even imagining amazing things happening really trip up my brain and I get paralyzed because if I don't have a sense of I will do XYZ, I will do ABC, and then I'm going to end up at D&E. That not knowing is really tough. And so. This is sort of me more teaching something that I am trying to learn myself. Um, but it's really fun, I always think to pull from other places where you have built strength and you have built skill sets to figure out how do they apply. You know, what is it to go adventuring with a podcast? What is it to go adventuring with an acting role to not know where you're going to end up to maybe try to make it? Actually, this was to try to make it one thing, and it ends up being something else entirely. My friend and I were talking about writing. I have this really fun idea for a short film that I want to make. Here in Asheville, and I've actually been having trouble writing it because I have such a clear sense of what I wanted to end up that I don't know how to be in the messy part of just writing stuff that might not be that final product. And my friend very wisely had said, well, maybe the point is you write this thing and it doesn't get made, but you meet someone who's a producer who then ends up making another project with you. That is really exciting, right? That the thing that I think I'm 

trying to get done. Might still happen, but also might just be the North Star. The point on the GPS map that gets me to the thing. That gets me to a whole other adventure if I let myself surrender, and if I let myself trust that the adventuring is the whole freaking point. 

So that's my thought for this week. Where have you gotten good at adventuring? And where do you need to flex that muscle so that you can really grow and expand your experience of life, of yourself, of your own creativity? In a way that lights you up, and in a way that um. Is unexpected and and where the real magic lies I think. All right. Be well my friends.