The impossible task of preparing for the unknown, and why I won't stop trying.

Last weekend I attended my first writers conference. It gave me everything I needed. It was inspiring, educational, motivational and fun. It was also nothing like I thought it was going to be. Like so many things I’ve never been through before.

While I was there, I attended a lot of lectures and a lot of readings. The readings were usually followed by a Q & A panel. After the final reading, one of the writers gave an answer that stuck with me. I’m not sure exactly how the question was worded, but as all three on the panel wrote from their own perspectives about their own experiences, it concerned choosing what from their lives to write about and what, if anything, they avoided. I’m not going to attempt to recreate her answer verbatim, but she basically said that it wasn’t so much choosing subject matter as choosing time. She had to feel as though she had enough distance from the experience that she could look back at it with perspective. When you’re writing a story, you have to know what happens to your character, even if the character is you.

A picture of an actual photograph (dating myself!) from when my friend Julie and I got stranded in Long Buckby en route to Liverpool when I was living in England. It’s still a hilarious memory for us.

I don’t think I could write about the fire or moving to Nashville yet, because in many ways we’re still getting established. We’re not yet settled. I could feel this even more keenly while I was in Kentucky when people would ask where I was from. What I ended up saying was, “I could say Nashville, but that feels like a lie because I’ve only been there for six months, before that was nineteen years in Chicago but originally New Orleans.” I mean, if you wanna get down to brass tacks, I lived in England for longer than I’ve been in Nashville. It’s a story that’s still developing. I’m not far enough through to be able to look back with clarity.

I can look back at some things, though. I gave myself mild anxiety trying to gather all of the things I thought I needed to have for this conference and researching and making notes and over packing to the Nth degree. Most of it, I didn’t need, but I don’t regret the research. Everything I did, including making myself crazy, ended with me learning something. Although not many people I encountered had business cards of their own, I was glad that I made a point to bring some. There were a lot of people that I met whom I hope to remain in touch with and connect with, so at least now they have my information. And hopefully they’ll hit me up!

On long, solo drives, I usually like to make phone calls to people that I haven’t talked to in a while. I’ll wait until I’m on the interstate, with my ear piece in, cruise control on and then call. On the way back from the conference, I didn’t feel like talking to anyone. My head was full. I wanted the time to think about so many things. The project I’m working on, other potential projects that I had been inspired to do, some of the work that I had been exposed to, the people that I had met and what I was going to do with all of it. I also reflected on how different my drive back to Nashville was than my drive to Lexington. I had been charged, exhausted, excited and stressed heading into Lexington. Heading back I was inspired, refreshed, motivated and … different. Not sure how else to say it. Different.

I thought about when we were preparing to move to Nashville six months, a year, even two years out from the actual move. I visited the city more than once, explored, went running in different places, tried to check out neighborhoods, made lists of fitness centers, yoga studios and gyms that I might want to work with. Researched those places, asked friends about what it was like to start from scratch after a huge move, poured over maps and locations, and on and on. Nothing has been anything like I thought it would be. In both good and bad ways. Nothing has been like what I prepared for. I had prepared for a place I had never been. A place that, although physical and tangible and real, only existed in my imagination. How can you really know what living in a place will be like until you’ve really lived there?

This applies to most things. It applies to my conference. It applies to going to a new country. It applies to growing up in a certain time. If you want to get really deep, it even applies to living as a different ethnicity or gender, etc. Unless you’ve lived it, you can’t know. It’s impossible.

But I don’t think I’ll stop trying to learn. I don’t regret trying to learn as much as possible about Nashville before coming here and I don’t regret crazy researching the conference before I went there. Some of my preparations really helped and were spot on, some of them seem hilarious to me on the other side. I don’t think not preparing is the answer. I think remaining open to what you haven’t prepared for, and could never prepare for is key. Be ready to be wrong, sometimes in not so great ways, but sometimes in the very best of ways!

When I was fourteen, on a trip to the Grand Canyon, we were on a river boat cruise and our guide gave us the opportunity to jump into the 47 degree Colorado River from the 110 degree August desert heat. It seemed slightly scary, but I wanted to do it. I remember being slightly surprised that my parents said it was okay, because this was not a planned activity, and we were (are) a family of planners and list makers. And I jumped in. And it was terrible and exhilarating and like nothing I had ever felt before. My clothes dried quickly in the dry heat, but I was cool for the rest of the day. Afterward, we went to see the Hopi village. I was sitting on the edge of a cliff, looking at the dwellings from across a gorge with my dad and he said, “Don’t ever lose that spirit you have of trying new things.”

I believe that I will continue to try new things and be open to new experiences and perspectives. I doubt I even could, but I won’t try and stop myself preparing for them as much as possible. I’ll just be ready to be completely unprepared and hope that it’s in the best possible way.