Creating 2015—Day 160 to Day 315:   WHO’S READY FOR ANOTHER 2012?

You know when you keep meaning to call someone or start a new project or get back to working out but time keeps passing and passing and passing until one day it feels hopeless or pointless or ridiculous to make that call, buy that domain name or go on that walk?  That’s how I feel about this post!  I started writing it several times over the last 155 days.  I actually had a whole one written that covered Day 160 to Day 232 but for some reason never posted it!  It was about the first day of fall and everything that went down over the summer.  But here it is, another 83 days from then and I’m finally putting my foot down and making myself:  JUST.  FREAKING.  DO.  IT!

Me launching my experiment in prolific creativity on January 1, 2012

What is the point, you might ask?  Good question.  One I’m asking myself with every sentence I type.  One I don’t know the answer to yet.  But here’s what I do know:  I AM READY FOR ANOTHER 2012! No, I’m not looking forward to a year full of insane, political nonsense or even the extra day we get—2016 is a leap year just like 2012 was. What I want is the fear facing joie de vivre I had when I started my Experiment in Prolific Creativity.  The entire year of 2012, all 366 days of it, was a year of high energy.  A year of feeling scared shitless but doing it anyway.  A year of anything being possible.  A year of creativity.  A year of taking risks.  A year of being bold.  A year of expansion.  A year of getting off my ass and getting out of my comfort zone.  A year that culminated in shooting my first feature film, Collusions, in January 2013—a dream come true.  It was a damn great year—one of the best of my life.  I’ve had many great years—I mean, any year I’m alive is pretty damn great!  But there was something about 2012 that made it different.  Nothing held me back—it tried, myself included.  I was living my life at full capacity.  FULL.  DELICIOUS.  LIFE.  CAPACITY.

2013 was supposed to be the year of completion and ended up being the year of exhaustion—and finding out my Dad had cancer.  2014 was the year of death—my Dad died and I finally finished my screenplay, Death Over 3 Bottles of Wine.  Looking back at 2015, I’d have to say it has been the year of letting go—letting go of my Dad being on this earth.  Letting go of expectations around my movies.  Letting go of old ideas of what I’m supposed to be creating.  Letting go of my attachment to what my life was supposed to look like.  Letting go of who I think I thought I was supposed to be by now.  LETTING.  IT.  ALL.  GO.

Wearing my new magical, amazing Tesla swag.  (On my birthday last week.)

My Dear Friend recently texted me on her birthday saying she’d never been so clear about who she is…finally stepping into her own shoes at 49.  Love that! But interestingly enough, I feel the exact opposite.  The older I get—I just had a birthday with 47 candles on it last week—the less I know.  The older I get the less I know about my ever-changing body, my always evolving belief systems, my unwritten future, what I want for breakfast.  The older I get, the more the world becomes this big, mysterious ball of WTF?  Yes, in many hideous ways—terrorism, racism, hate crimes, fundamentalists, the continued success of boy bands—but mostly in glorious ways:  Advances in HIV/AIDS treatment and a cure, Tesla, SpaceX, technology, the mapped human genome, gene therapy curing a dying baby of leukemia, the millennial generation out to change the way the world works, and the “I have no excuse now for being late” app WAZE.  The list of wondrous WTF’s goes on and on and on.  I feel like I am living in a magical and amazing time.  MAGICAL.  AMAZING.  TIME.

Throwing off my old shoes (and in need of making an appointment to fix my right big toe’s bunion)!

Dear Friend more than likely meant she simply feels more authentic than ever before…she feels confident, comfortable, good with who she is and where she is right now.  Love that!  But again, I feel the exact opposite!  I’m not comfortable in my present shoes AT ALL.  As a matter of fact, I have a big fat bunion and all of my footwear hurts like hell!  I want to kick off my old shoes and dance barefoot across a new path.  And yes, get the bunion removed too.  But my point is, I’m not satisfied with who I am right now.  I mean, are you really?  Don’t you want to keep evolving?  Don’t you want to keep expanding—your mind, your ideas, your knowledge?  Don’t you want to get better—do better, be better, create better? Don’t you want to experience the new, the different, and the unexpected?  Don’t you want to surprise yourself?  Don’t you want to NOT give a fuck about what anyone else thinks of you?  Don’t you want to live your life limitless and brazen?  Don’t you want to NOT give a shit about failing or looking like an asshole when you venture out of your comfort zone and try something new?  I know I do.  But how?  Another good question.  That incredibly freeing zone of endless possibility and creativity and personal power is where I existed in 2012.  The truth is, it actually wasn’t about the “how” at all. It was simply a decision I made.  I decided to make myself live that way for 366 days.  And it was gloriously liberating.  After that, I let myself off the hook…for the next three years.  THREE.  FUCKING.  YEARS.

Three. Fucking. Years.

Since then, there’s been a slew of excuses and WTF bullshit in my head on a minute-by-minute basis—the insecurities, the fears, the anxieties, all the mental gymnastics around failure and sucking and what people will think and whether I’ll succeed or not.  UGH!  Such a waste of time.  I deeply understand the urge to drink heavily, do drugs or eat my way to some peace.  Just crawl in a hole and make it stop.  It’s something that science says only gets worse with age.  The brain is quietly deteriorating as our biological systems slowly shut down, stop functioning properly and eventually, we die.  Good times.  But we can and we must fight it.  MUST.  FIGHT.  IT.

Yes, we must fight it.  What is “it” you ask?  Yet another good question!  Off the top of my head, I think “it” is inertia.  “It” is the status quo.  “It” is the comfort zone.  “It” is giving up.  “It” is NOT trusting yourself.  “It” is the urge to slip on the expected pair of shoes for your age, race, gender.  We must fight societal and cultural pressure to put on “old” shoes at the first sign of wrinkles, sagging jowls and joint stiffness to disappear.  We must fight the urge to have a cocktail to medicate away the pain instead of pulling on our running shoes.  (SO GUILTY OF THAT ONE!)

A little medicating (and celebrating my Kansas City Royal’s 1st  World Series win since 1985 and my birthday) with Uh-Mazing Romantic Partner.

We can (but we shouldn’t) wear the same shoes for the next 30 plus years and then just kick the bucket! Where’s the fun in that? We must constantly be reinventing, rejuvenating, reinvigorating, revising, reworking everything about ourselves—our bodies, our health, our mental state, our belief systems, our attitudes, our dreams, our spirits, our sense of wonder and possibility.  Simply put, we must religiously and constantly redefine what we believe we’re capable of.  REDEFINE.  WHAT.  YOU.  ARE.  CAPABLE.  OF.

Wow.  Felt good to get all that out!  I didn’t even know I needed to.  I find myself with an oddly super exciting feeling in my gut coming to the end of this post.  Like when I was 18 and getting ready to leave for college. Anything is possible in this magical and amazing and technologically advancing world we live in.  Even me making the decision to start having another 2012 right now…on a Thursday at 11:57 AM…instead of indulging my weird obsession of starting everything on a Monday or a January 1st.  (Thanks a lot, Grandma Galloway.)  So.  Why not?  ANYTHING.  IS.  POSSIBLE.

Until tomorrow, create from what you have…endless possibilities.

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.

Follow @KelliJBennett