Living in my head
Living in your head can lead to some great storytelling. It can also lead to some hilariously frustrating moments.
Like today I realized I bought the exact same flight for myself within a span of two weeks. Unless I clone myself within the next six months, I won’t need two tickets.
Note: If any Rachel Wilson clones are reading this right now, I’ve got a ticket for you!
Unfortunately, I didn’t have this realization until after the 24 hour cancellation window. I found out that they are 1) non-refundable and 2) non-transferable. Which, as you can imagine, totally sucks.
My only option is to cancel for a $99 fee.
I guess sometimes it costs $99 (or more) to live in your head. Sigh.
This weekend, I watched The Art Life, a documentary about David Lynch. I was introduced to him rather late, and I still haven’t seen a lot of his stuff. Even so, the movie was fascinating.
Like when he said:
You could live in one place and have everything.
Or when he described the process of finding his voice:
I needed to find what was mine. And I knew my stuff sucked. But I needed to burn through. And the only way to find it is just to keep painting and keep painting and see if you catch something.
Or when he expressed the importance of pushing the boundaries:
Accidents or destroying something can lead to something good. Very controlled things…they just screw you. And you have to sometimes make a huge mess and make big mistakes to find that thing that you’re looking for.
As I watched, I noticed just how much he lived in his head. It was a cool place to live and created a lot of cool things, but — as we know from my mistakes — living in your head can have some negative consequences. For example, Lynch admitted he wasn’t a very good partner because he would get so focused on his work. Or sometimes he didn’t take the best care of himself. Or sometimes his mind would take over and make him afraid to leave the house.
I’m not a Lynch expert at all, but I got the feeling that part of the reason he practiced meditation and ate the same lunch every day and grounded himself in the details of life (like the weather) was to counteract this tendency.
Even though the documentary inspired me as a creator, it also inspired me to keep working on living life outside of my head just as much as (or maybe even more) than I live inside of it. Of course, I love living in my head — otherwise I probably wouldn’t be a storyteller, and I do want to make great work. But I also want to maintain great relationships and actually experience things in the present moment.
And most importantly, I want to keep my $99.