Driving Through A Snowstorm

With all my recent travels, I've gotten to examine my deep anxieties about traveling, my overwhelming desire for it to be over, to have already arrived.

I'm learning that the not knowing what will be, the inability to anticipate and solve problems that have not yet materialized, make it excrutiating to venture forth.

The same applies to creativity.

Not knowing where an opportunity will lead, who will control the final product, what compromises I might need to make... all of these worries keep me from stepping into the unknown.

I recently (attempted) to drive through a snowstorm. (I severely underestimated Canadian winters!) What I learned in watching myself navigate the unknown, in real time, is a lesson I'd like to take into my creative projects.

Learning to trust myself.

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 friends, welcome back to January on the podcast, that very cold, very Dark month of the New Year when everything is supposed to feel fresh and exciting and it just feels like. Cold and dark and all the celebrating is done. I don't understand entirely why we celebrate the new Year in January. The more I think about it, the more I feel like that's more of a springtime thing. It's hard to get excited in January. I feel like January should be hibernation month should be like, WHOO, we made it through the year. Let's lay low for a while until like, the Sun comes back and then we'll come out anyway. Not while I'm here. That's just a whole separate rant about New Year's and year's resolutions and the pressure we put on ourselves. To constantly be whole new versions of ourselves. What I actually want to talk about, because I was thinking of you guys as I usually do, is um. So traveling and traveling, anxiety and the unknown of where we're going to land. So let me back up. Those of you who are following me know that in the fall I left my long term home in Brooklyn that I've loved living in, in search of a new home and not quite knowing where that's going to be. So I'm having this incredible year of travel where every couple of months I'm trying out a different city and seeing how it feels, seeing how walkable it is, seeing what the community feels like if it's creatively. Inspiring if there's things that I love to do, if it's accessible, all these kinds of things that I didn't even realize I took for granted in Brooklyn that not every city has, and that something's in Brooklyn are much harder than other cities don't have. So it's been this really fun experiment. Especially me, who loves data and considers everything research even when I don't like a place I'm like, ohh, they taught me so much to be in this place that wasn't right for me. So. Loving the experimentation. What's funny, maybe not haha way is that I'm a deeply anxious traveler. So for someone who is traveling every two months. I'm facing that anxiety more often than I used to, certainly 

pre COVID when I travelled maybe a couple times a year. And and it happened recently that I spent the holidays in Canada with my family, which was really great and in like mid January. So just this past weekend I left Canada and came down to Pittsburgh where I'm staying for a couple of weeks that I'm kind of in love with. And that's a whole separate topic, but driving from Montreal to Pittsburgh is. Well, I had to go through Vermont for other reasons. So like in anyway, turn it up into about a 1214 hour trip. So I was being really smart and I broke it up over three days and thought I would do 4 hours, hours, hours, hours, hours over three days. There was a long weekend. I was like great that I won't be so exhausted because driving doesn't feel like much, but I get really exhausted. Anyway. 

I there was a huge snowstorm in Montreal on Friday and there had been a couple of snowstorms over the holidays and they had predicted sort of like New Yorkers do this like predicted really massive weather and. You know, Rd. closures and concerns and nothing really came of it. So I got really lucky because I didn't have to contend with a lot of ice and a lot of snow. I don't have winter tires, which is a requirement in Quebec because the snow gets so intense and they've been having a really late winter, which has been a little easier for me in my very New York car. So I thought, OK, cool, like, they're saying snow, but, you know, usually they, like, blow it out of proportion. It's like, you know, snowstorm 2000, they still have those all the time. I remember living in New York and like, label everything is like the biggest thing of this. Century and it would like to know. Half an inch and it was like, oh guys. Anyway, so I very much underestimated Canadian weather is really my point. I set off into a snowstorm. And I was thinking the whole time, look, you know, in this little suburb where I am, it'll probably be snowy. Like the roads don't get as clear as quickly because there's less traffic. But usually by the time you hit the highway, there's so much more traffic that the snow melts pretty quickly and the roads don't get a chance to pile up and the snow wasn't falling that fast. So like, I had somewhat good reasons. I'm not a complete. Complete idiot. I don't know. We could debate that. But when I got out there, this snow on the highway was not going away. It was just accumulating more and more. And even though cars were going, it was really, really kind of treacherous driving. And I thought, OK, well, I'm heading down South, so the further I get S, the less snow there will be. Because usually, I mean that has happened before. Once I cross over into Vermont, essentially the ice that's been on my windshield for two hours or a week just kind of melt. Off because there's such a temperature drop or lift from. So I was like, OK, great, I'm gonna keep driving South and it'll keep getting warmer and the roads will get clearer and this will be fine. I'm only an hour from the border. What I didn't realize is, um, the patrol units were 

out and they were closing parts of the highway because the snow plows had not had a chance to clear the highways and it was too dangerous to drive. So every time I tried to get off or onto an exit or onto a highway, whatever it was, the exit was blocked. So they were rerouting all this traffic through still pretty dense snow. And suddenly like, I, I and I didn't know I'm a slave to my GPS. Like I don't know where I'm going. GPS doesn't reroute me somewhere else, so I'm just getting in more and more lines of cars who are similarly trying to get somewhere South and discovering that the exit that they thought they could get to has been blocked off, and suddenly the lines are getting longer and longer and longer. Um. And and my point about this mostly is that well first and the story. I had to turn around and come home and stay one more night of my aunt's place and head out the next day which was like the smartest call. It took Me 2 hours to figure that out because I kept thinking ohh I'm only an hour S once I get past this will get better and then finally I got to a point where. I could see for miles how much traffic was stuck, how much people because like 11 section of the highway was completely blocked off to cars. So everyone was on the other section of the highway and it was going back and back and back for miles and I thought. Even if the snow does melt at this point we just they've closed down so much parts of the highway they won't be able to get anywhere. And this is insane. I should just turn around, start fresh tomorrow, head out early. The roads will be better then because the snow was supposed to stop by that afternoon. Which is what I did. What I found really interesting, and the lesson that I took away from that, and the reason I'm telling you this very long story about Canadian snow and travel, is that, as I said, I'm a deeply anxious traveler. The upshot to that is before I go anywhere, like I spend the week before I travel literally imagining all the worst case scenarios, everything that could possibly go wrong. And I've already planned for those things. So by the time I actually travel, I'm usually like, really on top of it. But what I found really hard when I was 

noticing this anxiety I had about traveling and leaving, you know, Montreal to head South, was. There was a part of me that that just wanted to get on the road and just wanted to get it done, just wanted to be wherever I was going, right. Really had trouble with the process itself of being in transit. I knew where I was in Montreal, I knew where I was headed in Pittsburgh, and everything else was an open question and it was stressing me out to not know where I was going to land. Stressing me out to not know what challenges I might come across on the way there, stressing me out to not be able to imagine what challenges I might need to solve. Before I got there. And so I realized that's part of what's so hard about travel for me, is. A just the idea of being in motion just feels so unsafe and insecure. Like I can't ground myself but be. I literally am trying to plan for all the possible contingencies, but I don't know what they are. And there are so many things that I don't control that my brain just like wants to be done with it. And So what was fascinating was that I was watching myself in real time, observe the situation and make decisions based on the new information that I knew, right. So the first before I decided to leave. Thought OK, the snow usually melts, especially on the highway. I'm heading South, it'll get better as I travel. Got to the highway, it was like, oh, it's really not melting. Traffic's really slow. Everyone struggling with this, not just me, but the actual natives Of Montreal are struggling with this. Kept heading South, realized Ohh they're closing by the time they they closed one exit that I needed, the second exit they closed. It was like, oh this is becoming a thing. I wonder if all roads leading S are like this. And then you know, like I kept seeing and then I saw the line of cars and I thought oh, even if the snow gets better I'm in for like a 5 hour wait to wherever I'm going. That doesn't make any sense. If I'm trying to drive 4 hours today, you know it really broken the strip up. So I watched myself keep making decisions, keep keep weighing the pros and cons. Do I turn back, do I keep going? When 

I was still thinking I was close, I was like well let's just go a little bit longer. It'll slow down my drive, but eventually I'll get there. I'll feel really good to get to my first stop and then eventually I was like I won't get there it'll take me 8 hours, let's turn back. So I did and and what it made me think a lot about because I always think art is a microcosm for life. Life is a microcosm for art travels, microcosm for life, whatever. It made me think a lot about art and why I have so much anxiety about the unknown. The unknown of success, the unknown of completing a project. The unknown of you make a thing and then you put it out in the world and people could have a wild reaction to it, could have no reaction to it. You, you know? You get cast in a show and it becomes a huge hit and suddenly your life is completely different. Or there's so much attention on you that you don't even know how to navigate. Wasn't there before. They're so many. You say yes to a project and then you're working with them for a year and then it gets released and then that's a whole other thing, right? There's so many parts of. Being I don't this is a great metaphor but like being in the slipstream of a river you're you're joining something. But there's so much about it that you don't determine. And I like to determine everything. But more than that I like to know where I'm going to be so I can create safety for myself. Like I've been deeply anxious brain I'm always. I'm always worried about danger, even though. You know, I'm not in a I'm, I'm not in the prehistoric days where I'm being chased by cyber tooth tigers, which is what a lot of our brains still run on. Right? A lot of brain, the part of our brain doesn't charge of fear, is the primitive part of the brain. So it still thinks that things that we consider scary, like you know, am I going to get fired from my job or is this car going to get from A to B doesn't have a nuance to it. So something that is modern and not. Dangerous physically translates still as I'm I'm an actual physical 

danger, so the reaction is the same, right? You're still having this adrenaline, this cortisol, this fight or flight response to something. And so I'm kind of often in that, and especially when I don't know where I'm going to be and so I don't know my surroundings and where I'm going to end up. I end up especially in that fight or flight response from the reasons that I'm so anxious before I travel, my brain is trying to. Loop through all the possible things. What wedding to pack? What do I not need to forget? What will it look like? What? What possible things might go wrong, which I can do about the process itself and that I don't control? If it's a flight, is it going to be late? Is it going to be, you know, packed? Am I going to like my neighbors? Is it going to be noisy? Like, there's just so many things about it that I find the not knowing to be really, really hard. And so one of the key takeaways of watching myself go through this process was. Oh, it's not about being able to trust everyone else to be a good driver, or to figure out the snowstorm or to the plane take off on time. It's really about trusting myself that I had enough food in the car. I had a full tank of gas. I had water. I. I was safe in my car. I had a full cell phone charge, right? Like I've taken care of the things that I knew that I needed. And then everything else was me watching and figuring out, OK, I still think I can drive this safely if I go slowly. OK, I still think I'll get to dry land if I go South. Um. And just trusting that I would keep navigating what was ahead of me and. And what it made me think about with art is, you know, you start writing a script or a book and you maybe have an idea of where it's going to be and then. If it's good if you're really in it. It it takes over, you know, you discover your characters, you get to surrender to the story and be a channel for the story. Same with performing. You know you do all this prep work and then the goal really is to show up. And get out of your own head and just surrender to your creativity to flow 

to the greater ideas that we all have that are not just thinking all the time. And that's incredibly frightening. Surrender. Not having our guard up is incredibly frightening. And then on the flip side, too, like there is a larger kind of. The logistical but real world of you know you you do a performance and it gets recorded. I always have this year of like who's going to see it and I don't control the edit and how will it turn out. And that I find really stressful or I'm writing a TV show. I go on a night, pitch it and I I signed an agreement with this you know network or streaming service to make it. How much input do they have? How much do I need to change. There's so many things I don't control about making the thing. Um, and not for me is really hard. It's a thing that I get stuck on is what I'm trying to say. Right? And it's it's. Maybe it shouldn't be. I'm often judging my anxious brain and thinking, this isn't serving anybody. Why should I be afraid of this? If I just did the thing, I could, you know, I'm sure figure it out. Or if I get locked into a contract, then I'll just deliver on the contract. But that's not how my brain goes. It feels very protective of the stories that I tell, very protective of me and the idea that I'm creating stuff. And then it goes out into the world and other people might interpret it differently or have opinions about it, or more than that, like opinions. I think we can all disagree. They're fine with that, but. But that it would get taken in some way and exploited in some way, or I don't even know. I probably make a list of things I'm actually afraid of because that's part of the thing, right? The brain is scared of things that it hasn't even thought of, and so it's not necessarily making logical sense. It's more just like protecting itself with panic because that's how it functions. So I was just thinking about how. And I don't have an answer to this, actually. I really got as far as just being really curious about how travel is the same as art that you set out with a goal, a location you want to get to, finishing the 

book, finishing the screenplay, performing the play, you know, performing your songs, writing a song. You know where you're headed, you know where you want to end up. But the getting there is the thing that they're kind of is no map for like, I've taken Classes. I am a class junkie. I love learning things. I love structure. I love understanding how things get done. So I've taken so many classes on writing songs, on writing screenplays, on on acting, on directing, on producing. Like really, I will take a class if it's a good teacher and it's interesting. I feel like I can learn something from everything. I love taking classes that let's give my brain something to chew on. 

And one of the things I've had to do is stop taking classes and really surrender to the idea that lots of people have opinions and ideas of what worked for them to make a thing. And also I can learn stuff. Often I'm not dismissing classes. But that for me having so much knowledge in my brain, the hardest part actually is surrendering to the unknown of how do I get from A-Z. If my goal is to write a song. If my goal is to finish my TV script. Yes, there are a lot of tools out there. Yes, there are a lot of great teachers out there. There are a lot of books. But ultimately the question is what is the story that I want to tell and how is it gonna come out of me and how is it going to land on the page? And I don't know those things. And I've done it before, and I still don't know those things. Like they sort of have to be created every time, which is the joy and the agony of creating that. You don't know that you're starting from scratch, and even if you know the system because you've done it before, you still don't entirely know. How this particular story will get told? And. And so I'm here to say that I'm, I'm, you know, really trying to practice trusting myself to navigate. The things that I don't know now. Because part of the problem with that anxiety, right, is that it stops me from making moves or putting myself out there in the idea that that's protecting me. But the truth is probably 90% of the things that I'm scared of that I've read horror stories of other people who got locked into a seven-year contract so they didn't want to be part of or made a film and it got edited in a way that really, you know, where they sold a script and it got butchered by the studio read their stories like. Unfortunately, the industry is kind of predatory, or used to be hopefully getting better. But it can be quite predatory and it can be quite chew you up, spit you out. There's a lot of places where art and commerce kind of make a mess of things together. They're really complicated, intertwining. So I've read all those stories. And I worry about them. But maybe they'll never come to pass, and the worrying about them keeps me from. Putting myself out there, sharing the stuff that I write, sharing the stuff that I really care about, the stories that I want to tell. And so 

part of the goal is how do I trust myself to keep? Answering the questions that I come up against as I come up against them and really sort of dial back where my brain is already worried about how will I be OK when I get to this place I haven't even gotten to that I don't know about yet, you know? And people always have this thing, this like coaching thing of like figuring out like where you want to be and imagine and think about it. And I think for me that's never worked. And in part because of this, like I know the kinds of things that I want to do, but I don't necessarily have a place in mind where that's going to happen or what. That will look like and so mostly my thoughts about the future, as exciting as they are, also come with a lot of problems of invasion, of privacy and you know a lot of attention on you and the things you don't control and the things you give up for the opportunity to make something. And you know how do you balance the the press and the talking about the project or the making of the project? Like there's just so many things that. That I scare myself with, I guess is part of it. But there are also real questions that other artists face and other artists figure out, and I think maybe we don't talk about it enough, which is why I have so many questions and I'm trying to ahead of time plan for all of this stuff. Not that I even hoped to or planned to be all that famous. But I do think people often have a lightning moment where they get quoted, you know, out of context, like they have an interview with something, and then it gets out of context and it blows up. Like there's just so many things that we don't control. And I worry so much about those things. And one of things that I'm trying to do is train myself to trust that wherever I end up. I will figure out how to navigate it. I have a good enough team, you know. I know who my people are. I know who to go to ask for advice. I know how to solve. I got myself out of a snowstorm that I probably should never have been in, right? Like those kinds of things. Looking back and being like, oh, when this happened, I figured this out. I had no 

idea how to do it until it happened, but when it did, I had enough tools and enough navigation and enough knowledge and expertise from past trips and knowledge of being a Canadian and knowledge of whatever that he knew how to figure it out. Um, anyway, I'm talking around this because I'm realizing I don't entirely know how to do this. It's really, you know, my anxious brain gets me, it's like hyper productive and gets me to do a lot of things, which I'm really grateful for, but it's so hard for it to relax and let me just trust in the process. And that's like a whole rewiring that I'm really curious about doing in this year. I like the idea of trusting more and trusting the surrender more so. With that thought. I hope you're having a gracious, soft, restorative January. I think we should kick out all the ideas about what January is supposed to be and really let ourselves cuddle up with a book and a partner and a dog and cat, whatever it is that makes us happy. A good book for sure. All right. Be well my friends. I'll see you next time.