Guatemala or New York?

At a fork in the road, looking to the hummingbirds

Here in Guatemala, hummingbirds often appear. They bat their wings and shimmer like little frenzied angels. They sip from flowers only to dart off into the distance.

My heart these days sometimes feels like one of those little hummingbirds, a thousand tiny wings flapping within me, a thousand lives spreading out like Sylvia Plath’s proverbial fig tree.

I am trying to decide what to do with my life. Trying to figure out where to go, how to live, and what to do with these myriad gifts and talents I’ve been given. I have been oscillating in this space of indecision for the past many months. Actually, it’s been years. Maybe it’s been a lifetime.

Right now, in this season, I am trying to decide whether to stay in Guatemala, where I’ve been offered a position volunteering at a spiritual retreat center, or to return to New York to attend a graduate program in experimental writing, humanities, and social change.

Neither one of these paths feels solid. Neither guarantees a clear direction, and often these days I feel pings of envy when I see friends becoming doctors and lawyers, or rising in their ranks at magazines I once dreamed of working at.

But then again I also know how deeply, improbably lucky I am to have these choices at all. How insanely blessed I am to be here at all.

I chose this life, I remind myself. I elected to be here. I chose the bird’s life, the hummingbird’s life, the wanderer’s life, the artist’s life.

Nobody said it was easy, a man once sang.

But also, nobody said it would be this hard.

My dreams, all I want to do with this life, also feel like little hummingbirds, batting their wings against great gales. I often feel like I’m floating in a sea of unknowns, not sure of how to find solid ground or shore.

I dream of becoming a great and successful writer and singer, and yet the question of how to make this actually happen remains a question, a hole, a void, a portal.

Sometimes I’m able to fully and deeply trust in this mysterious path, to trust that I’m carried by a great wind and connected to something much greater than myself. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night desperate, filled to the brim with questions and doubt and fear.

If I could do anything, absolutely anything, it would probably be making a living off of this Substack. Honestly, I can’t think of anything I’d rather do than write essays about my travels and the world’s greatest mysteries and questions. Last year, when my subscriber numbers were rising more quickly, the dream seemed more viable, and I envisioned, and still do, starting an eco-creativity program on this site, nurturing people’s creativity through the rhythm of the changing seasons, leading moon circles and writing exercises.

In my dream life, I’d also be in a band that performs and practices sometimes at night, and I’d also be in a climate activism group that meets once or twice a week. That’s it, the dream. Writing, music, climate activism. A weaving of all of them.

I’ve never been exactly sure how to make this happen, and now I’ve reached a profound fork in the road. If I stay in Guatemala, I’ll be spending a lot less money, and I’ll have access to a spiritual music scene that has felt quite nurturing to me. But New York also is a place I’ve always known, and it feels more stable and secure, and I have incredible friends there, and the further I go from academia the further I feel myself getting pulled away from harbingers of traditional success — job, publications, titles, signifiers of significance.

This graduate program could either lead to nothing or to a great career in academia or nonprofits, whereas the lake could either lead to nothing or a great career in spiritual music, voice coaching, media for spiritual retreats, or something in that realm. And I absolutely cannot figure out what I should do, and time is running out.

Rain is falling over the lake. These mountains, and this lake, have been here far longer than I have. They know so much more than I do.

Lately I’ve felt more anxiety than I ever have in my life. Ripples of lightning-bolt fear that seem to pour over me like this rain is pouring over the lake. It’s because I feel like I’ve reached a precipice. My time traveling and flitting from place to place is done, I feel in my bones. I’ve just hit my Saturn Return. It’s time to start building something. To actually do something with meaning, to use my gifts to create something real.

I am thick in the mystery. Steeped in the unknown. I do my best to eliminate and quell my mind’s meaner thoughts — you’re a failure, a waste of potential.

I love you, I’m proud of you, you are enough, I say, the affirmations drilled into me countless times this year.

Neither staying here nor New York feels fully aligned or certain or definite, so I figure I will stay here, because I’ll be spending a lot less money than in New York, and I’ll have a lot more time to work on my art, and I can keep going deeper down this spiritual path, and deeper into the new romance I’ve embarked on.

That’s another unknown, love — new love. Love that comes after three years of healing and working on myself after a toxic relationship. Love where I still constantly have to remind myself I’m safe, I’m okay.

I often wonder how I got here. I followed a traditional path, got great grades, went to a great university. Got a job in journalism and figured that’s what I’d be doing with my life — writing, which is what I’ve always loved.

But now the journalism industry seems to be collapsing under the weight of ChatGPT, and even career coaches are telling me to try to pivot to something else, marketing or literally anything other than journalism.

I went into journalism because I love writing. And that’s what I still love, when all is said and done.

Writing has always been what I want to do with my life. There’s no other choice, no other answer.

I want to be with the creative muse. I want to float on the wings of something bigger than me.

When I write I feel I’m typing to a rhythm beamed in from some far-off star. Creating is still the most magical, sublime, and perfect thing I’ve ever experienced.

It’s hard for me to market my own work, it’s true, and I have so much resistance to that. I’ve written countless songs and books that have never been read or shared, I think because of this odd resistance I seem have to actually sharing my work with the world and to actually asking people to listen to me and support me. I know it takes a relentless kind of persistence to make it in art, and I have not, thus far, seen that persistence in myself.

But I cannot and will stop creating, which I suppose is its own kind of persistence. I know I will always continue to follow this shaky North Star, this dream of making a life of art and writing, music and plants.

How exactly to make it happen is another question. Everyone tells me to get quiet and follow my heart when I ask about what to do, but all I hear in my heart is the buzz of a million possible lives, a hummingbird’s beautiful dance.

We only get a short time on Earth. What will you do with your one wild and precious life? Mary Oliver asks me from beyond the grave. Such a short time before we become worm food, before we become stardust, before we rejoin the whole.

It’s a gift and a curse, having this much choice. I try to remind myself I am living my ancestors’ wildest dreams, that I am so lucky as a woman in particular to have these choices.

Kind people, sometimes draped in white robes, have told me I don’t have to choose, that I can continue to follow this path of trust and mystery and love. And after all, I have gotten this far. My mother, on the other hand, is getting increasingly concerned.

There’s definitely voice in my heart that is singing, it’s time to build. It’s time to create something real, it’s time to stop hiding and share the fire and light within me with the world. Time to fully embrace all my feelings, the whole spectrum of life.

And so that’s what I’m doing. Starting with this post. I’m not going to be holding myself back on here anymore, not going to be keeping essays buried in drafts for weeks or months, not going to pretend to be something I’m not.

I’m not enlightened. I know a lot and can channel a lot of wisdom and I have a lot of ideas I truly believe in. And I experience a lot of pain, depression, and suffering in my day-to-day life. And it’s all part of me, who I am.

I don’t know where I’m going. But I do know I’m going to keep leaping into love. I’m going to keep taking risks. I’m going to keep writing songs and singing them with all my heart.

And I know I’m going to keep tapping away onto this platform, as I’ve always tapped away on my laptop, my whole life — tapping stories into being. Dancing with the rhythm of the wind and the rain.

I’m going to keep looking to the birds, who sing because they must, or it soothes their nervous system, or to communicate. Who sing every morning no matter what.

I’m going to keep singing because I must and writing because I must. Because I am nobody without these words, and everything with them. In these words, in the blank page, in the silence where songs come from I see the whole cosmos, I see all creation, I feel oneness with everything.

I have spent years praying for clarity about my path in the external world of form. Years dancing between shadow and light in the chamber of my ego. Years dipping my toes into the sublime when I create, and years being confused as to how I’m supposed to allow this iridescent, unstoppable creative force to manifest in the world.

I’ve also spent years traveling, which was a lifelong dream and which I’m so grateful for. And I’ve spent years navigating a strange heaviness that lives within me, which I’ve learned not to push away but rather to embrace, but which also tends to make me want to slow down, be quiet, and, more often than I’d like to admit, gets me to abandon all the aspirational schedules and goals I set for the nothingness of a quiet night in front of the television.

I think my time of perpetual world traveling is close to done, at least for now. Lately I’ve felt a deep need for a place to settle down, a branch to rest on. I want to lay roots, want to settle into stillness, want to blossom and burrow and unfurl. Not necessarily in one place, but in one passion, in one art form, in one project.

Lately I’ve also felt a deep hunger for collaboration, and a deep desire to be in a band, where I can collaborate and mesh with other musicians rather than doing it all on my own, which is what I’ve always done. Perhaps that’s been part of the problem. I’ve been thinking like I have to do this whole thing alone.

All I’ve ever wanted was to tell great stories. To create great art. To make beautiful things that fly across people’s vision and ignite their hearts just like the hummingbirds — little fairies that never fail to remind me of how much magic there is in the world, every single time I see them.

I’ll never stop creating, that’s for sure, no matter where life takes me. I am an artist. That’s who I am, who I’ve always been. No matter what happens, I know this.

And maybe that means that I won’t have a super stable or secure life path. I do know I need to figure out some kind of career that will support me, and it’s becoming increasingly clear that journalism is not that. I’m looking into marketing, teaching voice and songwriting lessons, and leading retreats right now and am very open to suggestions.

If you have thoughts on what I should do with my life, send me a message…

But deep down I already know. I know I’ll always just be an artist. I think that’s why I’ve been blessed with such a deeply emotional, sensitive heart, and a constant yearning, and a nomadic spirit, and a fiery intensity at my core, and a deep love of beauty and birds. My life is all in service of my art, at the end of the day.

If I could do one thing with this existence, it would be leaving behind a great story — ideally one that inspires people to connect more with our beautiful earth and to realize we are not separate from nature. The creator of our earth was certainly an artist; you only need to look at the iridescent wings of the hummingbird to see that.

I think creativity has a role to play in healing our fractured relationships with each other and the earth. I think my purpose exists somewhere in that weaving. This weaving is what I planned on writing my thesis on at the graduate program, but now I feel like I could probably do that just as well here, on Substack and online and through spiritual gatherings rather than inside academia. But I am truly not sure.

If you’re reading this, I’d love feedback and insight from anyone else on this path. Were you also once a lost and confused artist-wanderer like me? What’s helped you? (Yes, this is a cry for help).

But I also know nobody can figure this out but me, myself, and I. And perhaps it begins with leaving behind the identity of someone who is lost and confused and realizing that I am actually not lost at all. I am a traveler, a songwriter, a poet, and an artist, on an artist’s path, weaving an artist’s way in the world.

It is very scary sometimes. Sometimes I think artists and shamans are not so different, and artists just work with spirits that want to manifest themselves on the page or in song. And shamanism, I am learning in the brilliant book Secrets of the Talking Jaguar, is a hard road, one that involves deep sacrifice.

Yet life itself seems intertwined with suffering, no matter how you look at it. Sometimes I feel like the luckiest person in the world, staring out over the lake. Across the world and all around me people are starving, dying, enduring unfathomable suffering. I know this very well, and have spent years steeped in guilt about it. I feel the suffering of my fellow humans and the earth in myself each day, and I’ve learned to channel my feelings about this into dreams of making a difference, of doing something with my life that makes this world better and lessens all this suffering in some small way.

In the meantime, maybe I’m not lost. I’ve been doing my best, doing what feels right, following my heart. I left behind a soul-crushing 9-5 and I have been sustaining myself by volunteering at retreats and doing some freelance writing. I suppose I’ve been following my dreams.

Here’s where it’s led me. To this precipice. Which feels maddening and luminous at the same time.

One thing I’m sure of: I’ll never stop writing and telling stories. So if you’re reading this, thank you from the bottom of my heart, because a writer needs a reader. And I’m tired of writing into the void, writing to no one, holding back my voice and gifts. I’m here to be heard, after all. Or rather, I’m here to let the creative spirit in my heart be heard. Because I often really feel like it’s not me writing at all. I’m just the channel.

And this, right now, this is what it wants to say. These words flit like hummingbird wings through me, carried on the wind of something much greater.

Here’s to the artist’s life. Here’s to the dreamers, the seekers. The ones who stand on the precipice and don’t look away. The ones who don’t, won’t, can’t let go of the dream. The ones who never stopped seeing the colors we all saw when we were children.

Thanks for reading along.