My heart stopped when I saw it.
How could I have lived in this house for the past five months and never known it was even there?
But sure enough, it was. Tucked under the shelf.
A bathroom scale.
Oh boy.
Since moving to France last spring, I have become what you might call a Wild Woman.
I’m living in a 600-year old stone cottage in the middle of the countryside. I can go days without seeing another human being. There’s no TV, no radio, no outside distractions whatsoever.
Every artist dreams of escaping to the middle of nowhere to focus on the work, don’t they? And this summer I was lucky enough to make it happen.
In my “real life,” I’m pretty regimented. Because one thing I’ve learned from working with world-class artists for so many years is the power of discipline.
And I came to France with the intention of being even more disciplined. I brought a long list of creative projects to complete.
But a funny thing happened while working with no distractions. Instead of discipline, I went feral instead. Feral, savage, uncontrollable…WILD!
Instead of my structured routine of getting up with the sun and going to bed early, I go to bed whenever I damn well feel like it. Which turns out to be much later than usual. I even find myself taking naps in the middle of the day.
Naps! Me!
I eat everything I want to eat when I want to eat it. My usual stringent diet out the window. I mean, this is France after all.
WILD!
What about my work? Well, that’s interesting too. Rather than stick to the rigorous schedule I created, I now find that I work whenever I want to.
Who works like that and actually accomplishes anything?
Me, as it turns out.
I’ve indulged in a different tempo than my usual strict marching orders. In fact, I’ve found my own rhythm.
This summer, I’m dancing to the beat of my own wild music.
And I like it.
I’ve always clung to discipline, afraid that left to my own devices, I wouldn’t accomplish my goals. I’d shirk off, spend my time reading novels and daydreaming.
As it turns out, there’s a fair amount of that.
But the truth is that I’ve formed a new relationship with my work, one that’s based on trust, on faith, on my own rhythm.
I’m accomplishing everything I need. I’m making new connections, both strategically and creatively. And I’m having fun.
France is delicious in every sense of the word and I’m licking the spoon of this experience.
But the presence of a bathroom scale put a screeching halt on all that. Now is the time of reckoning.
Can I truly trust the rhythm?
When I came here, I told myself that this would be the summer I hit my Magic Number. You know your Magic Number, right? The one you hit that time when you were 20 years old and miserable because you just got dumped, just as that bad stomach flu came on? And for one glorious moment in time, your bathroom scale hit a number that was forever etched in your brain as the one you would always aspire to?
The Magic Number.
Funny how we do these things to ourselves, isn’t it?
So when I found a bathroom scale peeking out at me from under a shelf, I panicked.
I’ve been living radically for months now. A Wild Woman.
Meringues, bread, wine, olives, all the French cheese I can keep down. Good Lord!
Surely, it’s a recipe for disaster.
I step on the scale and close my eyes. Who am I to think I can dance through life at my own rhythm?
But there it is.
My Magic Number.
Isn’t that wild?
So, now I ask you:
Are you ready to let go, trust your instincts, and become WILD?
Then it’s time to dance to the rhythm of your own music.