Category: Uncategorized (So Far)

I’m sure I’m hardly the only American who is accustomed to treating coins as basically a nuisance. I generally put them in my pocket, then later drop them in the origami box I keep them in at home, a pocket in one of my workbags, or the cupholder in my car. There they’ll stay until they’ve piled up sufficiently that it’s worth taking them to the bank to turn them into, you know, real money.

But here in the Eurozone, the smallest bill is a five, and I find my habit butting up against that reality. I can’t just throw them in my bag and forget about them. All those 1- and 2-euro coins add up pretty quickly.

If I am here to deepen my understanding of flow, and I sit down to write because I am in the moment feeling called to write, and then the moment deepens and I continue to write rather than let the call of “I am here in Barcelona, why am I spending time writing!?” distract me, then am I not doing exactly what I called myself here to do? There is a part of me saying I am missing it. And another part saying, in a calm voice: No. This is exactly right. If you are going to choose against the flow of the moment, you are choosing a temporary self (the one that’s in Barcelona) rather than your true self. And you are here in exploration of your true self. So write what needs to be written. There will be plenty of time to meet Barcelona. Flow lives in the space of faith. So trust, because flow can be trusted.

Each of the last three of mornings, as I’ve been getting ready to leave the Airbnb, I’ve heard strains of classical guitar music coming through the walls. At first, I thought it was recorded music, but by the second morning, I listened closely enough to realize that it was someone practicing. And boy did that bring up some emotions.

When last I was in Spain, 24 years ago, I still had aspirations to pursue classical guitar as my vocation. I practiced three hours every evening during my stay in Madrid, and I never once felt like I was somehow missing out on being there. Practicing like that was just something I did. I was pretty dedicated.

I burned out not long after my return to the States. Back then, I didn’t know why I burned out, but I do now: My practice was always rooted, if you can call it that, in the future. It was like, “Someday, when I get good at this, I’ll finally enjoy it.” Almost never did I come out of my head and truly experience my practice in the moment.

If your motivation is external to you, you’re asking for that motivation to collapse if you ever sense, as I came to, that in reality there’d be no real satisfaction upon attaining the destination you imagined. (Or, perhaps more accurately, that there is no such thing as a destination at all).

But in hearing that phantom guitarist play these last few mornings, I was struck by something that I lost when I burned out, and haven’t really ever much grasped over the intervening two-and-a-half decades: the classical guitar is a beautiful instrument. And I’m kinda feeling that maybe I miss it in my life.

Last night, my Airbnb host took me for a walk up to the top of Turó de la Rovira. It’s one of the tallest hills in Barcelona, and offers three-hundred-sixty-degree views of the city. And damn, what a beautiful city. Looking south, I could see all of the main part of Barcelona spread out before me (La Sagrada Familia being the most obvious landmark) and then, beyond that, the sea.

Being atop a tall hill and then looking south over a city toward the sea put me in mind of being at the Griffith Park Observatory in Los Angeles–and perhaps in part because the similarity ended right there. Los Angeles’ endless automobile-oriented grid looks exactly nothing like the myriad angles of Barcelona’s intersecting streets and the organic topography of Mediterranean architecture that rises above them.

I tried, but I could never love Los Angeles. But I bet I could love Barcelona.

I have twice today tried to zero-draft short anecdotes about my experiences so far in Barcelona, and twice I have seen those zero drafts expand and expand and expand, which means that the significnace of those anecdotes is greater than I initially thought.

Which, based on what the zero drafts taught me, makes sense. Were I to declare a common theme to these zero drafts, I might call it, “The Not-Flow of Alienation and Fear.” And I’d also be pleased to report that, though that theme describes my experiences thus far, it also comes with a promise, backed with decisive action, that I will do better. I came here to explore flow, and to declare to the world that I am truly ready to teach it. Apparently my first European student has to be/gets to be myself.

Sunday, 22 April

The metro route I had to take from the airport to my AirBnB wasn’t the most convenient, so it took me a while to get there–perhaps in the future I’ll choose my first place to stay partly around how many metro changes I need to make. Once I arrived, I was quite pleased–my host is very nice, my room is large and comfortable, and the location is good. (None of these things were surprises, really–the reviews on AirBnB all spoke similarly.)

I changed into more comfortable clothing (I left a cold Denver and arrived in a warm Mediterranean Barcelona) and went for a walk. Good choice. While the basic architecture didn’t strike me as radically different from other parts of Spain I’ve been to, it’s never ugly, and it’s fun being back among the narrow, non-gridded streets of Europe. Every place that isn’t a major road, a plaza, or a park feels kind of like a car-width canyon–look up to see the layers. I’m less enamored of urban living than I was when I was younger, but I still enjoy urban areas like Barcelona, where you can easily tell that most of the city evolved before there was such a thing as an automobile, and the scale remains decidedly human.

Holy shit! I leave tomorrow!

I intend to work pretty religiously during my travels. There will surely be much to write about from a travel perspective, from a career perspective, from a flow perspective, and from a personal perspective. I’ll definitely have a lot to say.

I also intend to keep my focus on drafting for A Way of Life. I’ve seen some good stuff show up over the past few weeks, and Jerry and I are committed to seeing the project to completion. I’m carrying that intent with me.

My hope is that I’ll keep up with Free Refills in some form like what I do now. Five updates a week is a good goal.

But I’m still looking at this period as “The End of the Beginning,” and I may find that it’s time to approach publishing in a new way. At the very least, I am certainly giving myself this allowance: I’ll maintain my intent to publish five updates per week, but I won’t worry too much about getting something up every single weekday. I’m not going to break away from whatever cool experience I’m having in order to open up the computer and get something on the website. I intend to work, but I don’t intend to get so wrapped up in work that I miss the magic of the moment.

T-Minus two days and counting.

As realizations go, this may be so stupid that it’s planning on voting for Trump for a second term but:

Yesterday I was trying to figure out my post-Barcelona plans and I was feeling a bit overwhelmed. No, that’s not true. I was feeling a lot overwhelmed. So I got online and started looking at the map and at transportation options, just gathering some actual information instead of relying totally on, let’s face it, guesses, and when I got up from the computer, I recognized that I was feeling much less stressed.

So, the realization: when you’re faced with what feels like an overwhelming set of choices, do something–literally anything–to start narrowing down those choices, and you’ll start to feel better.

T-Minus three days and counting.

I have been telling myself that on this trip, as I travel through places where no one knows me and the cultural dictates differ from here, I don’t have to be anyone I don’t choose to be. I can live as far outside my usual patterns as I desire.

When I examine this belief, though, I’m not sure it holds up. How much is seven weeks of travel really going to change me? I spent four-and-a-half months in Spain in college, and, thinking back, I don’t know how many of my patterns changed during that time. (Granted, I was only twenty back then. Cultivating change wasn’t on my radar in the same way.)

Furthermore, I’ve made huge changes in my life over the past year, but nevertheless more days than not I play out the same patterns as I have for the prior umpteen years.

But there is one thing. I remember this from my time in my Spain. I was walking from the metro to my friend’s house for our weekly lesson exchange. (I taught him English, he taught me guitar.) His neighborhood was a relatively boring and not especially attractive part of Madrid, with nothing in particular to draw the eye, but still that was the moment that the entirety of my experience in Madrid came into a certain focus, and I said aloud, “This is the happiest I have ever been.”

T-minus four days and counting.

I’ve now booked two places to stay in Barcelona, in order to experience two different home bases in the city. I have my passport. I called my bank and let them know the countries in Europe I’ll be traveling to, so presumably my credit card won’t get denied anywhere. I finished my taxes yesterday. I have my travel backpack and all my toiletries and a bunch of clothes that I have to narrow down substantially. I’m planning on bringing a bunch of electronics, and I actually think I’ll use everything I bring. I haven’t made any other plans at all except for my return ticket. I’m going to another continent and apparently for me this is what passes for planning. Do you notice how these sentences are unfurling without obvious rhyme or reason? My (non-)planning looks a lot like that.

And it’s all going to be okay. It’s going to be better than okay. It’s going to be amazing.