exactly where you need to be
Hey sweet friend,
This weekend I drove across too many six lane highways to truly one of my favourite cities. Travelling always makes me feel insane. No matter what destination I have landed at or in I feel like I have instantly made the wrong choice. I never did well at sleep overs and that panic to call my mum to come pick me up strikes me in the heart whether I have driven across one province and three states, flown across an ocean or found myself at the next town over for what I have decided will be a romantic, productive or inspirational evening away from home. The decision fatigue settles once I arrive at my destination. The choices I’ve made to get me to the location, space, destination all feel like mistakes.
There is never just the one choice that makes me think “oh god what have I done”. No matter where I find myself. A location, state of mind, job, run, restaurant, breakfast. A series of choices that make up how we get to where we are. Infinitesimal decisions, the fork in the road or just the re-uptake of a habit.
I think about the choices I could have made. I wonder what it would have been like to kiss more people, or less. I wonder if I should have gone to a different school or moved to a different country. If I could have been kinder or louder. Big choices. But small ones too. Choosing what to eat for breakfast, how I take my coffee or whether I walk or take the bus. The opening monologue from Trainspotting comes to mind, an obvious choice when the cliché is pinned to the walls of the first apartment. What if I chose to hang another poster? But I choose classics that are classics for a reason and I am not here to pretend to not be embarrassing. I chose to be embarrassing.
But despite all the choosing. All the gut checks, intuition, calling friends, checking my astrology apps, forks in the road, coin flips, choices that felt like that were made for me. I do actually, in fact, find myself exactly where I need to be.
Its a small sign, and they’re always there if we are playing attention. The right song playing in a gas station bathroom, the shape of the petals on your orchid, the way a squirrel definitely winked at you you’re sure it did, running into the friend you were just thinking of. A coincidence, sign, wink, irony or just something that makes you do a double take.
We could choose a million different lifetimes. The choice of peanut butter on toast or jam could lead us to a million different iterations of living. There is the lifetime where I never chose writing and there is the lifetime I only chose writing. And as
reminded me in the latest Do You Ever podcastEverybody worries in time travel movies that when you go back in time, the smallest thing you're gonna do will just ruin history, right? Completely change history. But nobody applies that to the forward concept.
What if the smallest little thing that you did completely changed history? Completely changed the timeline?
If we let ourselves apply that to the present for a second. That a choice, so small, could land us exactly where we need to be.
Decisions never come down on the side of right or wrong. Sometimes the choice gets made for us, the clock runs out or we just never jumped anyway. But still somehow we make the art, send the letter and even in the darkest moment of “what the fuck have I done” can offer us the opportunity to choose. To choose different, to choose the same to choose to lay down or power through, to choose something so grey and in the middle we didn’t think it was a choice at all. We still hear the song, get lost on the dirt road that offered an even better view, pick up the phone just as it’s about to ring, speak in unison or notice just how perfect a turning leaf in hot October can be.
In all our choices, we manage to end up exactly where we need to be.
As always I’d love to hear from you in the comments below (or hit reply in your inbox) What small moment signaled to you you’re exactly where you need to be this week?
Welcome to the Creators Dispatch. A weekly essay about the creative journey! Here I write about being an artist, human and angry woman on the internet. Word of mouth is the most special and radical way of sharing. If what I say here inspires you (or pisses you off 🥰) share my work with the group chat, or your best friends neighbour. It REALLY helps 💖
FINDINGS 🗺️ (Ok we’ve got a lot of substacks I’ve been reading so come for this journey with me)
I attended a workshop inside
community (Sustenance) with and WOW my writing practise has grown a lot the last few years writing here on substack but I think I quantum leaped learning from both of these women the last month.- and I had on our podcast listen here or catch the video interview below
- is literally the coolest person I know and I just wanna shout out her latest poetry collection 📖
Getting to listen to
speak last week was timeline altering me last week and his latest piece “America’s Carbon Bill Is Coming Due” makes me want to write another climate change episode of the pod (jk I already am 😵💫)
big love and many blessings for the choices and changes and timelines we exisits in all at once
xx
Phoebe 💕
*typos are left to reflect the fury passion and 3D humaness of being a passionate freak in the world – and you know not a robot *beep boop* I am just a human girlie living on earth with a mortal brain 🤸♀️
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