Can you make inspiration? - #15

If so, how?

I’m preparing for a radical shift.

In theory, moving here would be the shift. From a city of almost 4 million to a town of barely 180, that should be the seismic shift, but we also moved from cabin to cabin, mountain to mountain, remote job to, yep, still remote job. We still ride bikes and go on long walks from the house. We still leave the patio doors open on warm days. We still make pour over coffee. We still do all the same shit in almost the exact same way. But the real shift is coming.

Next week, the forecast calls for 33 inches of snow at Telluride Ski Resort, the base of which is over 1000 feet lower than our house. Winter is finally slinking down from the North with a weather system just big enough to tickle southwestern Colorado with her fingers.

I’m excited about this, but with a fog of unearned frustration. My outlets of joy are being culled by the very fact that the sun doesn’t emerge over the ridge-line until 9am. The ski hill (is this a Midwestern thing I need to stop saying? Do people say “the mountain” here?) opens at 9am and closes at 4:30pm. Guess what I’m doing from 9 to 4:30. Yes, that’s right, typing things and wearing blue light glasses that don’t do anything so I look marginally older over Zoom. 

I felt myself slipping this week into a state of very silly panic with thoughts like, how am I going to become a world-class skier? How am I going to stay fit and happy? Am I going to lose my mind sitting at this desk watching everyone else in this town ski into the backcountry from their front doors while I answer emails?

These fears and qualms have left me seeking inspiration for ways to ensure A Very Good Winter. Finding inspiration is sort of a fool’s task in some ways. It’s like looking for wind. It’s not that you ever find it, you never lift a rock and go “ah, yes, there it is, a breeze.” Instead wind finds you. You’re just enjoying a nice hike and then you’re pulling hair off your lips out of your chapstick thinking “when did it get so windy?” Inspiration is like that, but pleasant. You don’t open the doors to a gallery and go, “ah yes, inspiration!” but you still go to the gallery in hopes of finding it. Inspiration only reveals itself through the lens of curiosity, of an open heart and an open mind. 

So, then, as long as you have curiosity, it ought to appear — no?

I understand that inspiration is ethereal and ever-changing and hard if not impossible to bottle, but I’m a fan of attempting to concoct it. I like hunting it down like you could in fact find a breeze under a rock just like you can find the ocean in a seashell. So that’s what I’ve been doing. Climbing the mountain to force the wind’s hand. 

In LA, there were countless things to do to drum up some inspiration: go to the Hollywood Sign, visit the Petersen Automotive Museum, see the LACMA, spend an afternoon at the Tar Pits, people watch at Venice Beach, get spooked at the Hollywood Cemetery, etc. etc. There are entire websites dedicated to it. But here, your list is short. It’s a small town. You check off the “things to do” very quickly, and move on almost immediately to the “events to go to” category — a category that’s been in detention since COVID became principal. 

But outfitted with a mask with too many filters in it and my mix’n’match booster shot, I have been pounding on inspiration’s door asking it to let me in for the winter. I’ve deployed a few strategies here.

1. Follow the locals.

Literally follow them on social media. I follow every single event space, half the businesses ( the hair salon, the pet store, the ski shop, the butcher,) and seemingly every account that includes a reference to the region. If I’m going to do things, I need to know what things are happening. Which is how I ended up at a ski movie premier in Mountain Village. The movie was called Roots. I didn’t know anything about this movie except that Telluride Ski was hosting it. It wasn’t Warren Miller or Teton Gravity Research, but it was… a valiant effort? Except for the part where the only people they showed falling in the actual bulk of the movie were women. Men only fall in the bloopers when it’s funny. 

I’ve been a part of at least one faction of the adventure sports scene for a number of years now, but my god is it heartwarming to be around ski bums. That back-of-the-throat, high altitude surfer accent, the unbridled excitement for stoke — it’s an infectious and pure energy full of childlike joy. We went home and watched another ski movie, and I went to bed watching ski clips on Instagram. I was drunk on excitement for the season ahead. 

2. Do it the hard way. 

No ordering from the internet. No quick workouts in the house. Inspiration can show up in my living room, so can a pile of cash, but waiting for either seems like a real fool’s errand. In that case, why wouldn’t I just run an actual errand? Look, I’m not saying I find inspiration at the supermarket, but life can happen on the way. I see an elk in the trees, I see a strange flyer on the bulletin board, I run into someone. I listen to music louder than I know is good for me. I sing at the top of my lungs. I run in the forest and find an old wooden box half buried. Even when there’s nothing in it, you can imagine what was.

3. Attend. 

Ah, my old friend showing up. She’s been quarantined for so long. But it’s time. So long as I’m conscious of protecting myself and others, I need to get out there. And yesterday, I did. I went to a Vision Boarding and Yin Yoga event. It was hosted in a yoga studio, a ceremonial blanket laid in the center of the room scattered with crystals, old magazines, scissors, and glue. Normally this is the kind of thing I would find so deeply embarrassing that I would only do it alone in the privacy of my own home, even away from the eyes of my own husband. It’s so vulnerable and makes me feel so pathetic to believe in something so far from science, but when I let myself collapse into the deepest corners of who I am, it’s hands in the soil talking to the trees. It’s Mayan fire ceremony purging a bad relationship. It’s painting a picture of a town and believing that will help me move there. It’s listening to the same song on repeat until I can feel my ribs expand and something warm and pure taking the space. It’s private and personal and I let very few people see it. 

The host of the event, when we began constructing our vision boards, asked if anyone would share what was on theirs. A silence hung in the air, so I interrupted it.

“More money?” I said with a chuckle.

No one laughed. 

I wasn’t going to make any friends, but I was going to hammer inspiration out of that glue stick. And maybe it’s the Capricorn in me, but when other people said “a home” and “chickens,” you need money for both of those, OK? 

Despite leaving with a feeling of cowed loneliness, I did leave with a Vision Board full of inspiration. Inspiration is so often conflated with feelings of joy and gratitude, but you can peel at the edges of inspiration to see those feelings are just the surface. Inspiration is one of many fuels of change. It is a cousin to vengeance and desperation and hope. They are all but matches, useless past a single moment of shine without something to light. 

When I hope for A Very Good Winter, what I am really asking the gods is to not let me slip out of that light. Do not let me churn so readily with the machine that I find myself so deep in the gears I cannot climb out. Do not let day after day pass with me answering emails, arguing semantics on powerpoints while the wind sings its songs, waiting for no one. Do not let me light the match of inspiration with no kindling to catch it. 

I’ve made many vision boards, but they never change. The only thing that needs to change is me — to continue to loosen my grip on shoulds and allow the free fall into coulds. More than ever before, I can see time on my face, and I am afraid of how deep in the machine it feels like I am. But I manifested my way here. Maybe here will help. Maybe when you look for the wind, it knows. Maybe when it sings, it’s hoping you can hear. 

Earlier I said inspiration was hard if not impossible to bottle. The exception to this, where I can indeed collect and synthesize inspiration into a drug, is music. So this week I want to leave you with three playlists. Like many people, music is a direct port into my soul. I love Spotify’s Wrapped because it’s like everyone took the same personality test and posted the results with abandon. So here, as an ENFP and a Type 3 and a Capricorn, my soul to bear: 

• My 2021 Playlist. I make a playlist for every year, and 2021 was no different. It’s all the songs that interested me this year. And Spotify labeled it as “Wistful” and “Happy”. Give it a try if that’s your vibe. (And, if just a few, here are the songs that I cherished this year: Red by Jaguar Sun, Deep Water by Lyves, Reasons by Madelyn Grant, Last Hours by Rybirths and Tangina Stone, Permission by Sucre, Junk by Vivienne Chi, I’ll Be There by Overcoats, Living Life by Steady Holiday)

• Your “please listen to this” songs — I asked Instagram what’s the one song you wish everyone else was equally obsessed with, and I made a playlist of your suggestions (and a couple of mine.) Save what you like, skip what you don’t. Some of these songs are already wildly popular, but plenty are hidden gems.

• As a special treat, here is a playlist Ben and I have been making together for several years: COVERS. Speaks for itself. We like to put this playlist on at dinner gatherings and have people compete to see who can identify the original first.