On the Wings of Seagulls

One of my favourite things to do is sit in my living room with a cup of tea and watch the sunset through my gigantic front window. My house is a raised ranch so the main floor sits up a good ten or more feet off the ground, giving me a great panoramic view up my street as the sun moves across the window before tucking itself goodnight behind a bank of trees off to the west.

The return of warmer weather here in Canada brings with it the scores of birds that fly back home after wintering in the south. I’m lucky because I live in a small city, really more of a town, so the birds aren’t drowned out by the din of city scapes and endless white noise.  My street is quiet and oh so peaceful.

A couple of nights ago I was sitting on the couch – okay I was lying there but I was fatigued because I’d spent the entire day before outside, pretending I was a pioneer and splitting wood to burn in my firepit.  Just so you know, I WAS Laura Ingalls’s in a former life.  Don’t even try to question me on this because it’s pretty much stated fact.  Everybody knows it, and my Dad used to call me “Half Pint” so that means it’s for sure true.

Anyways, as I was enjoying my tea and staring out the window as one does when they drink tea on a couch facing a window, my eyes came upon a seagull soaring high in the air.  Seeing a seagull is nothing out of the ordinary since I live close to a large body of water, but it was the way she was flying that literally made me pause. She was so effortless in her flight, diving, then soaring, then diving again, moving her wings in a seamlessly choregraphed dance of effortless motion.

At that moment, she didn’t have a care in the world. She did as she pleased and went where the wind took her.  And I sat there thinking, wouldn’t it be great to be a bird.  I honestly felt a little jealous, and it had nothing to do with the fact that we’re all self-isolating at the moment because of the COVID-19 virus.  I wasn’t even thinking about that. I was just thinking about the freedom to soar as she pleased – to live her life in that moment, completely independent and free from any sort of restraints.

It’s such a wonderful metaphor for our own lives, well at least mine.  When I was much, much younger, I used to try and hide that I was a highly creative soul who didn’t necessarily fit the stereotypical ideal of what a teen girl in the 1980s was supposed to be. I did my best to conform and fit in, but in no way did I let my friends know who the real me was under all that hairspray and blue eye liner.

I had moved to my current city at the beginning of Grade 9 and being the new kid and starting Grade 9 at the same time was terrifying to say the least.  It just wasn’t cool back then to admit that most often, you’d rather be home entertaining your parents with sock puppets or writing stories, then be out in a farmer’s field getting hammered on Peach Schnapps – although that was a pretty good time too, not going to deny it.

The point is, I hid who I was. I allowed my own fears to sabotage a huge part of my personality. What on earth was I thinking?  I know better now but at the time, the thought of being “outed” as different was worth the pain. I was also very lucky that this wasn’t the case within the confines of my own house. I felt safe there and being the youngest kid, my entire family were already quite familiar and accustomed to my quirks and creative peculiarities.

For the longest time I felt like I was a bird in a cage – trapped and suffocated, mostly by my own doing and also by societal norms I think, especially back then.  Society wasn’t so open or accepting to being different.  Just look at all the 80s movies, like The Breakfast Club.  Everyone of those kids belonged to a “group” and while they came together that Saturday and found some common ground, you knew that Monday morning, things would go back to being exactly the way they had always been.

I remember when I first began to rattle the cage door, just to see if I could bend it a crack. I didn’t tell anyone (outside of my sister and my Dad) that I’d begun writing a book and I only worked on it when I was alone in our restaurant or at home.  God forbid anyone know.  I think this lasted about two weeks.  Then I brought my laptop to the restaurant and wrote whenever I had a spare moment, and while my staff was there.

And guess what? No one cared! No one laughed.  No one ridiculed me.  No one said a damn thing except words of encouragement.  Imagine that?

After that, it was screw the fear! I didn’t just unlock that cage door, I busted that fucker open with a stick of dynamite.  And man, what a difference it made in my life.  I finally felt free.  I wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote.  I taught myself how to build a website and researched how to publish my own book.  Back then, self-publishing was seen as a vanity thing, but I didn’t care, if I was vain to want to see my words in print and to hold them in my hands, then so be it, I was vain.

I’ve never felt so high as the day my box of books arrived on my front doorstep. I mean I was jumping around and screaming, and I don’t think I stopped smiling for weeks.  I was the seagull soaring above the clouds, living her dream.  Let me rephrase – I AM the seagull soaring above the clouds living her dream.

We all have fears.  We’ve all been afraid at some point in our lives.  That is so normal, and that is so okay.  The key to overcoming these fears, especially when it comes to creativity, is to just wholeheartedly embrace it.  Recognize it. Sit with it.  Try and dig deep and figure out why you feel that way.

Then take that first step.

Then take the second.

Then keep right on going!

You deserve to live the life you were meant to live.  You deserve to fly high in the sky like my seagull friend, dipping and diving as you see fit.  Fear is just a thing, and things can be overcome.  I know, I’ve been there – for a very, very long time.

Nowadays, I don’t give a shit what people think of me or how they react to my work. Some like it, some don’t.  That’s not for me to judge. I take negative feedback with a huge grain of salt.  Writing and creative work in general are very subjective, and everyone is entitled to their opinions, whether I agree with them or not.

My biggest take away from all of this?  If you always do things to please other people, then you will always be afraid. You will always have fear because you will always judge your work or even worse, yourself, by their reaction, and you’ll never do the things you were born to do.  The cage will stay locked, and I know you don’t want that.

The great American poet Maya Angelou once wrote, “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”  I believe this to be true.  I have never felt freer than I do right now.

Don’t let fear keep you caged.  Live YOUR life and you’ll fly on the wings of seagulls.