What's Next?

What you want to acquire, you should dare to acquire by any means.  What you want to see, even though it is with difficulty, you should see.  You should not let it pass, thinking there will be another chance to see it or to acquire it.  It is quite unusual to have a second chance to materialize your desire. - Buson in the Zen Calendar (April 14, 2003).

Nothing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose - a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye. - Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley in the Zen Calendar (July 25, 2003).

Work is much more fun than fun. - Noel Coward in the Zen Calendar (September 1, 2003).

Noel must have been an editor. - Me, tonight.

Day 352.  Forget writing.  I want to be an editor.  I spent the better part of last night proof reading hard copies of several blogs.  It was a blast.  I will give up my red pencil when they pry my cold, dead fingers from it.  Editing is so much easier than producing written words in the first place.  The task channels and directs my obsessive proclivities like a bullet train to Tokyo.  I always give my screen blogs at least a once over after I click "publish post," but computer editing isn't near as gratifying as marking up a hard copy.  Paper and pencil are indisputably more Zen than a keyboard and monitor.  Carving up my writing afterward just about justifies the immense amount of effort the original production requires. It's good to have a purpose.

Two weeks from today I will be half a century old.  Very cool.  The closer that finish line looms, the more difficulty I have with staying in the here and now.  That's right:  I am VERY attached to completion.  The Monkeys chatter about "What's Next"  like Blue Hair Day at the beauty shop.   On the cushion, I try to sit like my head is on fire, which requires returning my focus to the moment about fifty-four times per minute.  Nirvana feels as elusive as paying off my son's college loans.  Strange how that fails to bother me in the least.  A year ago, I thought by now I would board the enlightenment train as effortlessly as a spring graduate with a Eurail pass.  Instead, I hardly even notice when I can't find the station.  The one Zen concept I seem to have tentatively grasped is, "Just this!"  And it only took me a year . . .

I was hoping perhaps the Monkeys could be diverted if I indulged some of their What's Next fanaticism in tonight's blog.  Nothing like stringing words together to free up some empty space in my cranium.  In addition, it can't be a bad thing to enter the second half-century of my life with a steady purpose.  Buddha knows, I floundered about an awful lot during the first half.  I don't really expect to flounder less in the next fifty years, but I bet it doesn't bother me near as much.

Here is what is next:  I will proof and edit my blog like a madwoman, and then click on that mysterious ad that says, "Turn Your Blog Into a Book."  I suspect that doesn't mean an actual published book, which is fine, because I am hoping it's simply a decent method I can employ to bind what I've written for myself and a couple of select supporters.  This next may come as a surprise:  I plan to strap myself to a jet-propelled ego rocket, rename the blog something that remotely captures its content, then read and study all the methods for increasing readership that have blipped across my screen for the past year.  I will become a manic marketing machine for the blog.  I plan to invite and cultivate comments and dialogue and interaction like a natural-born Rah-Rah.  I'm going to meet people and initiate discourse with them.  I'm going to purchase a new computer with massive memory devoted to Putting Myself Out There.  Such attachment and ego manifestation felt contraindicated during the year I was actually sitting, but come February 4th, the paradigm shifts!

I'm going to contact many of the Zen Buddhist teachers and sanghas listed in the Buddhadharma Quarterly and let them know about the blog.  I'm going to prolifically read Buddhist writing - both ancient and contemporary.  I will follow other Buddhist blogs, and comment my heart out.   After researching publishers,  I'm going to compose and mail heaping quantities of query letters across three categories:  the blog and other Buddhist writing, the novel, the nonfiction book I've outlined in my head.  Guess I'd better outline it on paper if I'm going to send queries. In between querying, maybe I'll even do some actual writing on the projects to which the queries refer.

Meanwhile, I will sit zazen.  Pedal bicycles.  Attend tandem events.  Keep my eyes more open and my mouth more shut.   Mind my true nature.  Mute the Monkeys, bask in impermanence, thrive in emptiness, drift in nothingness, surrender to simplicity, prosper in the present, attenuate attachment, relinquish myself to Reality. Goodness.  I've learned a lot this year.

Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc