Recently, I realized that I was holding myself to an arbitrary standard.
That a well-lived human life is supposed to be a novel.
I am the main character, the protagonist, if you will.
And my life is an interconnected story with a start, middle and end.
This assumption was not serving me.
In fact, it was hurting me.
In trying to write my life as a novel, I couldn’t help but notice and draw attention to the inconsistencies.
The plot gaps.
The unexplained character drops or replacements.
The simple fact that I, the original character, had inexplicable differences in “personality” from one chapter to another.
Instead, one day, I had a flash of beautiful, compassionate insight.
My life is a series of vignettes.
A collection of short stories.
My life is not a novel, building coherently toward a prorgressive plot and a tidy or profound finish.
I’m a hot mess, a beautiful and magical amalgam of lives. Plural.
I am living LIVES. Plural. Lucky me, right?
I’m a cautious but silly child.
I’m a studious, ambitious student who’s hell bent on competing with ghosts and shadows.
A sexy cowgirl at a Texas rodeo, singing and dancing my ass off.
An awkward, reluctant middle aged woman who feels out of place at a suburban book club.
A rowdy single mom who is more Rage Against the Machine than Wheels on the Bus as she educates her children on American history through the playlists of the decades.
A wise, calm mentor and life coach who can hear the darkest of dark secrets and love you more because of it.
Sometimes I’m 3-5 of these people in a single day. Delicious!
My story does not make sense even to me, and I’ve been in every scene.
I used to feel shame about the lack of coherence in my life story.
Who is this character?
Is she introverted or extroverted? In love or destined to be alone? Cerebral or whimsical? Generous or narcissistic?
Yes.
I am all that and more. Depends on which story that I’m living in at the moment.
My clients come to me all the time hungry to write a coherent story with a strong ending.
And…I tend to attract fellow short story life writers.
More in the style of Flannery O’Connor and Ray Bradbury and Anne Lamott.
What about you?
Do you want your life to read like a novel?
Who will read it when you’re gone?
Do you like the living of your current plot line?
Or…
Do you want to be a collection of short stories, at times incoherent or inconsistent?
Do you like living your plot line?
Are you ready to switch to another story?
Wrap the current plot line up gracefully…
Or…
Leave it hanging just like…P.S. Please click here to sign up for my free video + PDF “3 Ways to Reduce Stress TODAY!”
