fuels to power your life, it’s like jumping off a cigarette boat
onto a sailboat: disorientingly quiet, steady, calm. I love the
calm. I’ve been aching for it for years. I love the peace and
connectedness I’ve discovered along this journey . . . but
those terrifying spikes of panic sure did help me get books
finished.
I told her that this journey from pushing to peace had
changed my life . . . and that one of the unexpected
complexities is that I didn’t need what I used to need from
my work. I had learned the hard way what achievement
could and couldn’t give, and my newfound learning made
me want to cook dinners and snuggle with my boys and
read novels, and not really care so much about what anyone
“out there” thought about it. This is freedom, but is this the
end of the road for a writer?
I find myself confused about the career I’ve found
myself in: if the white-hot fire to be heard, to say something,
to put something beautiful and honest out into the vast
silence isn’t fanned by fear or desire to be respected or need
to be seen, then what’s left? Do I have anything left to say?
Or should I close my laptop and stop this endless chattering,
this endless need to say something, anything?
Another way to say it: what powers our work when it’s
no longer about addiction to achievement?
The last pages of this book have gone unwritten for a