Day 5: In Transit

Day 5.  I need no alarm.  I’m awake with the sprinklers.  It’s 5:30am.  I’m still not packed.  I stumble to find my iPhone.  Isn’t that what everyone does first thing upon waking?  Check emails while they pee?  No response from photographer.  I’m deliriously wide-awake.  That painful perkiness you have when you didn’t sleep much the night before in anticipation of the next day’s travels.  Even once the email snafu panic had cleared, the frenzied energy from yesterday would not release me to the sandman last night.  Instead of counting sheep, I laundry listed everything I needed to get done:

• Wake up early
• Pack
• Email photographer friend again
• Drive truck around so battery isn’t dead when you get back from trip
• Buy Dad a birthday card
• Send email to Sam
• Call Aunt Wanda
• Call Les back
• Respond to Brenda’s text
• Find out why John’s having a rough week
• Poop before I get on the plane

Round and round I went until a disturbing little thought surprisingly hushed the mental gymnastics and made my body relax:  You might die before you wake up and none of this will matter.  I quickly drifted off to slumber land.

I only remember my new “going to die” sleeping pill once I settle into my seat on the plane.  I think, what is up with this obsession with death?  Or, am I finally starting to use it—at least as a sleep aid—as Steve Jobs suggested?  Before I can go too deep into that rabbit hole, another question pops into my head, “what happens to creating from what I have while I’m in transit?”  Just the idea of being in transit conjures up images of wagon trains, airplanes, ocean liners, and spirits passing across, over or through something.  What all am I going to pass across, over or through by thinking outside the box inside the box and creating from wherever I am with whatever I have this year?  I decide not to overthink it, even though I know I already have, and instead, I take a deep, long breath, pull out “In Praise of Slowness” and read.

The flight is painless.  I enjoy a lively conversation with my brilliant and enlightened 18-year-old niece as she drives us to our destination.  Hello’s and hugs and hunger ensue with my sister and her family.  Jose Peppers for dinner.  With stuffed bellies and jammies on, we pile on the bed to talk for hours.  Yawns and sleepy eyes end the slumber party fun.  My sister’s computer savvy husband works his IP address finding magic and gets my Mac connected to his PC preferred, triple password protected Wi-Fi and here I am, droopy eyed and wrapping up.

Although there’s a few things left on the above list I did not get done, I remind myself I could be dead in the morning and I will be forgiven, so I don’t worry.  Full of tacos, love, gratitude and appreciation, I realize, even in transit, it is possible to create from what I have.

Until tomorrow, create from what you have…wherever you are.

Kelli Joan Bennett is a filmmaker, actress, writer, entrepreneur, advocate for creative thinking and Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Think Outside The Box Inside The Box Media.

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