On Sylvia Plath and Puss in Boots

“I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in life. And I am horribly limited.” Sylvia Plath

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You’d think I don’t have enough to do. You’d think I spend my days sitting around saying, “Wow, I’m just so incredibly bored,” and my nights watching Seinfeld while eating Doritos and Skinny Cow ice cream sandwiches – okay, well, that part is true. But I am not bored. I have more to do than I probably should, and yet… and YET… I have just agreed to be the stage manager for our community theater’s upcoming production of Puss in Boots.

This is something I do. Right when I am on the verge of being completely overloaded, I find that one thing that just sounds like so much fun that I can’t resist adding it to the top of the pile, with a “ta-daaaa!”

I have always done that, but I’ve never known why. But today, finally, I’ve figured it out. I want to do so much because there is so much to do.

I blame the people around me. I’m surrounded by creative, wonderful people who make my life richer just by being in it. I’ve always gravitated toward quirky artist types, and thanks to being a writer, I often get the chance to delve into their psyches a little deeper than most. What I’ve finally realized, though, is that these people, and this life I’m leading that is absolutely steeped in art and beauty, has just made me want more. Like Plath, I want to live and feel all the shades and tones and variations.

I seek out things that fulfill me – things I want to do, not things I’m expected to do. And if you’re honest with yourself, you know there is a difference. For me, well, I volunteer at a local arboretum, where I find peace just walking the grounds. And the community theater, where my soul soars every time the stage lights come on. I read the writers I most admire with a voracity that hovers somewhere between study and worship. I meditate to connect myself with the moment I’m in, I exercise for the sheer joy of feeling the strength of my body, I watch Nora Ephron movies to remind myself what falling into new love is like, and the other day I put a thin slice of freshly-shaved Parmesan cheese on my tongue and almost cried because it was so amazing.

It’s easy, I think, to get overloaded with the wrong things, and that’s happened to me as well. Those are the things you peel off and throw aside, like a wool sweater that itches. But when you find your life bursting at the seams with wonderful bits of beauty and art and love… how are you ever too busy for one more little piece of it?