Stronger Than I Am

Just a Bit of Warning:

If you don’t have time for a really long post, you might want to save it until you do.

Love,
Leslie

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There was a moment last week, and many of you read it on Facebook, wherein the only words to my post were “I’m going to drive out the Gorge on Saturday and I’ve got an extra seat in the truck. Takers, you know how to find me. It’s not like it’s hard.” There’s been a lot of drama swirling in my head lately (which, I assure you, has nothing to with my current reality and everything to do with creating a new one) (Please don’t call me to ask if anything is wrong) (Really). I am working very hard to let money come to me, instead of working for it.

I know that initially sounds terrible, but I don’t mean it in the absolutely white-entitlement way it sounds (Ok, maybe. Thanks for calling me on my shit. You’re a peach). I mean that I am looking for ways of setting up my web site, my Facebook page, whatever to make money for me when I’m not here (like, at my “real job”). I don’t mean “not working” in terms of being lazy. I mean not working in terms of direct trading of services for dollars.

In my family, we call the ability to do that “sitting around, smoking cigars, and owning stuff.” Actually, that’s not what we call the ability. That is the very definition (for the ENTIRE McLanemy clan) of filthy stinking rich. The first time we heard that phrase, the person telling the story had just come home from a middle school friend’s house, where there was an elevator inside. I definitely don’t have to achieve that level of fame.

I will be happy when we can stop buying spaghetti and mushroom sauce at Dollar Tree like it’s going out of style. I will be happy when I don’t have to wonder if I’m spending too much money on Dr Pepper when COLA is so much less. I will be happy when I don’t think about how to come up with next month’s rent instead of having enough money in the bank to do what we really want. Because what we really want is so much bigger than what we really have.

That’s the immediate dream. That’s the dream that can’t take off soon enough. I’ve been writing for long enough now that I’m not intimidated by people like Dooce, Mrs. Kennedy, and The Bloggess. I look at them and I don’t think “wow… they’re so much better writers than me.” I think “I’m every bit as good a writer as those women, so how did they get to the top of the field? Is it still possible to earn a living while blogging, or has that ship sailed?” So many bloggers that would have made it got wiped out by the Dot Com bust, and I’m not sure that the medium has quite recovered in this economy.

One of two things will happen: 1) Your content is so star-spangled awesome (quite an image, Aaron Sorkin) that advertisers come to you and offer you money to hawk their wares. 2) Your content is so star-spangled awesome that a conglomerate like HuffPost, Gawker, etc. will buy you out.

And technically, those are just the two things most likely to happen. There is a third, but it is so rare that you probably have the same odds of winning the Olympics: your content is so star-spangled awesome that a movie or TV writer sees your stuff and offers you a series with William Shatner.

If the web site takes off and this is actually possible, I do not want to go back to a full-time job. I want to earn a living so that I have time to create a vision and implement it. This web site is ultimately not about me. It is about you, and the wonderful things we can do together if we become a community. That’s the vision. Not a web site, but the online place to go when you need a place… you know? I don’t want this weblog to become all about God, but God appears because I’m interested in the divine. But at the same time, I want this community to have the same feel of a church- where we care about each other and ask what’s going on in each other’s lives.

I will say it again: the vision is not for me. The vision is to create something amazing for you.

The good news is that the web site is taking off and I’ve gotten more love in the last month than I thought was possible in a written medium.

And that’s what I’m thinking as I’m busting my hump up the trail.

I have a mantra:

Stronger than I have to be because I need to be.
Stronger than I have to be because I need to be.
Stronger than I have to be because I need to be.

I am huffing and puffing hard because this is the first time in years I’ve been on the trail. But the mantra keeps up with me, over and over and over and over while Sisyphus laughs in schadenfreude.

Stronger than I have to be because I need to be.
Stronger than I have to be because I need to be.
Stronger than I have to be because I need to be.

The switchbacks are long and not really ready for the season. Obstacles in my way everywhere. Boulders, sticks, burrs where you step and you start looking up because it’s been .8 miles and the waterfall is just about to peek around the corner and I’m not going to make it… not going to make it… until I see you, wrapped in your rain jacket because the force is so great. Walking toward you because I don’t know anything in that moment except “I’m going to kiss her under the waterfall.”

The memory is not the kiss itself. Those kisses are long gone, kept in the memory box under my soul for safe keeping. What’s still under the waterfall is the joy I felt in that moment, similar to being born again.

Stronger than I have to be because I need to be.