Delusional

 

Vic and I in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan last year. 

Good afternoon. I went for another walk this morning with Vic. It seems that the only way to get myself out of my chair is to go somewhere in the morning. I’ve always been a morning person in terms of energy. By lunch I start winding down, by mid-afternoon I start a steady descent into the Mariana Trench of lethargy so that by evening I’m barely a functioning adult.

I’ve always been this way, even as a child. I’m a sprinter, not a distance runner. Hot out of the gate, heaving and panting after 50 yards. 

So, I’m trying hard to get a morning walk into my routine before I hit that mental wall and go comatose. 

I’m not in love with my options for walking around here. I don’t live far from Lake Michigan and the park system that runs the length of Chicago, but just far enough to make walking there and back the extent of my nascent exercise regimen and it’s not until the very end of that route that there’s a payoff in terms of trees, water, pretty stuff. Relaxing stuff. 

So, for now I’m just walking in the immediate neighborhood looking for buildings that I fancy to draw. Perhaps in time, I’ll be able to walk further and include the lake and the neighborhood in the same route, but I’m being very careful to start slow and easy. I know myself and if it starts feeling too much like physical work, I won’t keep it up. 

So, 2 whole days of morning walking under my belt. Ha! I’m imagining myself as a person who likes to walk and hoping reality will follow. 

Speaking of imagination:

I was watching a YouTube video that other day on urban sketching and this man, Karran, was listing 3 or 4 things you need to do to start a sketching habit. The first 3 or so were typical: making time, planning the sketch, etc, but it was the last one that rang a bell.

He said to be a sketch artist you need to be a bit delusional. Just a bit. It’s not helpful to be full-blown delusional and consider yourself the next Picasso, but you do need to be just delusional enough to think, I can do this, I can get better, I can learn to draw. 

Everything creative endeavor I have ever pursued started with delusional thinking. One of the greatest gifts my mother ever gave me was the idea that I could be anything. She used to tell me, “You’re good smart. Not genius, but good smart. The kind of smart that allows you to do anything, be anything you set your mind to.”

I believed it as a child. I never thought I couldn’t be a doctor, a lawyer, a professor, a musician, an anything if I was willing to put in the time.

I believed it as an adult when I went to college in my fifties, when I went to Oxford University for a year abroad, when I picked up creative writing and started working on my Masters at Northwestern University, when I ran a K-12 school in Chicago for 30+ years, on and on. 

Every good thing that I have ever done started with a shot glass full of delusion. Delusion shushes the ever present critic pushing against my mother’s words. If I stop and think long enough I start doubting, but in a delusional state, I just plow right ahead and jump off the cliff, sign-up, volunteer, say, “Yes, of course I can do that.”

I’ve always thought faith has a delusional aspect to it. That throws some people, but I like it. The right amount of delusional thinking opens door we would never see in our right minds, it takes us to the beyond. 

So, here’s to being delusional. Now pick up the pen, the walking staff, the brochure for those pottery classes, the dancing shoes, the conversation with a stranger, an estranged friend. Whatever. 

What’s more delusional, dreaming of something better or different, or just waiting to die?