Our first full day.

Or was it a year?

Retreat time – out of ordinary time – has already erased wrinkles, eased shoulders away from ears, brought glimmers and small miracles to the page.

Carefully laid plans have been abandoned, classmates from 20 years ago rediscovered, critics met and turned into allies, and four delicious meals savored. Oh molten chocolate cake with fresh whipped cream, thank you for that one melting bite.

It’s raining and we are cocooned, sipping tea, napping in the living room, crying, hooting, dancing, doing Dance of Shiva, surrounded by a circle of heart torus energy.

10 women have returned from earlier retreats. I watch their familiar faces around the circle and feel such a sense of tender communion.

Of belonging.

Today, we talked to our writing project – to what wants to be written. My project had a lot to say, which is exciting, because I’m usually too busy concentrating on the group’s needs to do my own thing, and also a bit frightening because it wants a lot.

It wants to be a book. It asked me to “stop doubting the form.” I wanted to say, “Excuse me, there are too many books. We don’t need any more books. I’ve written 6. That is enough.”

But I did not say that. I listened. Respectfully. I will keep listening and writing.

Knowing I have the company of 28 other courageous writers who’ve got my back.

Sending you the scents of cottonwoods and sage, three coyotes, and that chocolate cake: retreat goodness. Wish you were here.

Oh don’t I love when this happens? The answer is yes, yes, yes!

This is yesterday, when a coaching client (super fab super smart doctor-writer-coach-farmer, what an amazing hyphenate that is!) discovered she was actually working 20-30 hours more a month than she realized.

She did that thing called keeping a time diary and it revealed such gold.

She vaguely knew she was working longer since changes at the hospital but without clear facts, she took not being able to do what she had previously been able to do personally. As in “I must be losing my edge, getting old, missing something, not working hard enough.”

What does taking it personally lead to? Only big heart bruises, no creative energy, less compassion for yourself and others, and perhaps a pint or five of your favorite frozen dessert.

This is what happens – but only every time- we forget to pay attention to what actually is. As in the facts, ma’am.

On a call today with the amazing Molly Gordon talking about getting just right clients among many other important self-employed creative thing, several people talked about the difficulty of choosing what to work on. My dear friend Camille Maurine chimed in about how she is passionate about all her projects so she doesn’t want to choose.

Passion without reality means little or no action on what we care about. Little or no income. Little or no impact.

The world needs us to get out of our way.

It’s why I wrote the Satisfaction Finder, it’s why I declare the most important thing I need to do each day the night before, it’s why I have a Brain Trust… and it’s still hard to be human and face how much time I actually have in a day.

If we are unwilling to be human, and actually admit we are living in space and time, we have very little chance of getting much done.

Or of enjoying doing it.

So keep a time diary for a week, plan your day the night before and include only what you really can do on your list (rather than what you wish you could do), let yourself grieve all the things you want to do but can’t right now, get help choosing, but for golly’s gosh sake, let yourself be human.

Love you!

Links: Molly’s call (you can still get a recording), time diary, Camille Maurine, The Satisfaction Finder.

This post is part of a collaborative skein of thought and love woven with Susan Piver, Mahala Mazerov, and Hiro Boga. Please visit their blogs to read their take on home, and let our words and thoughts kindle your own home soul.

Much of my life, I have been obsessed with a longing for home. Literally. I have bought, swapped, remodeled, and left so many houses, apartments, attics, cottages, and even a half-remodeled haunted Victorian, that I find myself unable to remember them all.

My late teens through my late thirties are striated with couches, pedestal sinks, paint cans, a jack hammer, a neighbor who blasted rap music every Sunday, a neighbor named Halcyon, a neighbor who gave me a Van Briggle pitcher, a spontaneous courtyard party after an earthquake, two picket fences, neighborhood watch meetings, weekend graffiti paint-outs, Montecito garden parties, Easter egg hunts (one before I had Lilly), four gardens, four cats, three dogs, rats skittering (Gainesville and Montecito), seals barking (Bainbridge), garage doors opening, Dad’s voice calling “Jenny, are you home?”

And through it all, there I stood, echoing with longing.

For near 30 years, this terribly fierce longing baffled me. Why did I last only one night in the college dorm, renting a tiny furnished apartment the next day, then arranging and rearranging the furniture? Why did I acquire a Rhodesian Ridgeback at 23 and walk that dog past the mansions of Hancock Park before work every morning and evening, not because I dreamed of being rich or married, but because I ached for what those houses represented to me?

Safety. Dependableness. Belonging.

Looking back at my younger me, I feel such tenderness for her appetite. But, at the time, I just felt weird.

I made myself wrong for my longing to belong; I wanted so much to feel at home, with myself and with others, that I didn’t realize how nearly universal the longing for home is.

I didn’t realize I exiled myself from belonging my making my longing for home wrong.

This morning, taking a break from struggling to write this – my writing skills are not equal to the force of feeling roiling in me – I realized I have lived here, on this island, in this house, the longest of any – 9 years.

I have lived here not because it is my dream house or because I love it but because I, slowly, became determined to stay put.

By staying put, imperfectly and with resistance, I have, of course, partially met a part of my longing. I have used staying put as a way to come to myself.

Yet another part of my longing still burbles with hankering: the part of me that is ready to invite myself to belong. To open my home (metaphorically) to others, and to the Other.

Because, doh, the gravel bottom of my longing is for that which can never be known.

Or as the great Rumi said,

I didn’t come here of my own accord, and I can’t leave that way.

Whoever brought me here, will have to take me home.

I’ll stop now and go listen to the echo, but instead of looping back on itself and losing me in the process, I follow it… maybe, for one breath, all the way home.

As everyone knows, Oprah’s new network OWN recently hosted a contest to win your own TV show.

You’ve been asked by about 10,000 friends to vote on their show, yes? And you did vote, because you are such a good friend.

Actually, I believe the contest was to win a chance to compete on a reality show. If you win that, ala American Idol, the prize is 5 episodes of your own TV show.

I’m not actually sure because I’m terrible at reading rules and instructions.

Which I proved by recording a video with my daughter, which was promptly disqualified because you are not allowed to have two people in your video – which is not in the rules.

I went back and checked.

What is in the rules, front and center, is you have to be 21 to enter.

Oh.

Lilly and I were momentarily bummed to be rejected but doing the video was really about showing Lilly you can take steps to make things happen.

Because we’ve been talking about doing a mom-daughter show for 4 years. When I was still married to Lilly’s dad, who is a cinematographer, I imagined it as a way we could all travel and work together.

Here’s the thing: It’s a great idea, even an important one.

Watch the video and give me your thoughts on how we might do this on our own – not in a big scale, “get a TV show way” but in no gatekeeper small fun way that could help teenagers and parents unite in a conversation of how people find, and stay, passionate, about what they do.

Or maybe there is someone already doing this and I could point people toward their work?

I can hear Seth telling me:

There are no gatekeepers anymore Jen.” (Note: imaginary conversation.)

All thoughts on playing with this idea welcome!

Links: Oprah audition, Seth