My Year In California

Basecamp, CA -- Every step of the journey is the journey.  The book I've worked on for the last four years is now printed.  Yipeee!  To learn more about it, visit: myyearincalifornia.com.  For anyone lucky enough to have their dream come true, I pose a question: Now what?  Stay tuned.

Judging A Book By Its Cover

Basecamp, CA -- Here it is!

Kickstarter Campaign Successful

On Independence Day, the book printing of "My Year In California ~ a journey toward midlife renewal" was funded on Kickstarter. Yippee!!! So grateful and humbled. My heart overflows with gratitude. Thank you to all my backers. 

Here We Go!

Basecamp, CA--I've been writing a book "My Year In California ~ a journey toward midlife renewal," for the last 18 months.  It is 90 percent complete.  Yipee!!  I've launched a Kickstarter campaign to help fund the book's printing.  Visit the site to learn more about my project.  If you feel inspired to contribute and receive a reward, great.  I encourage you to view the Kickstarter website and see for yourself all the creative projects that people are working on.  Who knows, maybe you might just catch the fire and start your own project.

My Book ~ A Journey Toward Midlife Renewal

Basecamp, CA -- The book is well on it's way toward completion.  Yipeee!!!  Here is the backcover blurb:

At midlife Ingrid Hart is a single woman whose two children have just left for college.  Once a mother who made cinnamon toast for her children, she has lost her identity. Ingrid wants to discover who she is in the second half of life and makes a bold choice. She launches on a one-year journey across California where she lives in one city per month for a year.  

  

Financial obstacles block her path from the start. Will she overcome these barriers and continue her journey or will she abandon her dream of discovering who she really is? 

Ingrid learns that her journey is mostly internal and loses faith in herself and her choices. She discovers her sacred wound—and it acts as a catalyst for her transformation—what imprisons her will also set her free. She holds both the lock and key to her personal salvation.  Ingrid must overcome her fears and learn to trust herself once again.  

A Journey Toward Midlife Renewal ~ My Year In California is a travelogue and pictorial essay.   There are over 80 images and captions of people and places that help tell Ingrid’s personal California story.  

Two Years Later: Every Step of the Journey is Still the Journey

The things I carried with me on a
one-year journey of California.

Basecamp, CA – Two years ago I packed up six suitcases, put them into my car and launched on a one-year pilgrimage across California.  I lived in one California city per month for a year.  My desire was to discover the meaning of my life—the overarching goal was to write a book about this experience. 

            On the journey, I learned so many lessons—the most important was to release attachment to outcome.   Allow things to be what they are, rather than what I think they should be.  All suffering comes from holding on to a certain way of being in the world.  This holding on creates a rigidity that can often break a person in half.  There are many broken people in the world.

            After the journey—which was one long daytrip, is when I learned more about the meaning of my life, which is to help others through their process of transformation.  Visit my new website and you’ll see that I am now a “personal project manager” – helping make my client’s dreams come true. 

            Now, about that book…I’m happy to report that the first draft of the manuscript is complete.  Since I embody the lesson learned about releasing attachment to outcome, it has been made very clear to me that the book will not be just about the one-year pilgrimage through California, but rather about my own process of transformation from ages 48 – 52.  I release attachment to what I once thought the book should be, and accept what it will reveal itself to be. 

            This gentle release creates a sense of well-being because it’s based on faith and trust that all is as it should be.  We are all on a journey and I believe if we treat this journey as one-long daytrip, we would discover that it can be joyful.  Further, if we release attachment to outcome and allow it to be what it is, we would once again be made whole.

Tahoe City: the first place I lived on

the journey.  Everything was bright, shiny

and new...so grateful.

            Here’s to wherever you are on your journey, may it be divine.

Intellectual Icon: Berkeley's Campinele

Berkeley, CA – Every time I look out my living room window I am greeted with a vision of Berkeley's Sather Tower, known as the Campanile.  It stands 307 feet tall and is the third tallest bell and clock tower in the world.  To me, it represents intellectual stability. Writing the book A Year In California is both exhilarating and debilitating.  Feeling stuck in the writing process yesterday, I walked the two miles from my Oakland home to the Campinele and placed both hands on the cement structure, hoping to gain strength to continue on my path.  I was not disappointed.  The energy of 22 Nobel laureates passed through me, their undaunted courage inspiring me to continue.  I stepped back from this intellectual edifice in time to gain a whiff of some pungent cannabis coming from a man in his late 30s.  I took him to be a student of life, inhaled deeply, and made my way to the Bancroft Library. 

A Year In California -- So Far...

Photo taken in the extreme
northeastern part of California near Cedarville.

Basecamp, CA  -- The book proposal is written and sent out.  The Twitter site is up-and-running.  The blog is resurrected.  After a full year on the road in search for the meaning of my life, the infrastructure, for all intent and purpose for the book is in place.  What's left?  To write the freakin' book. 

My mentor is Elizabeth Gilbert who wrote (in her words--not mine) the "freakishly" successful book: Eat, Pray, Love.  Elizabeth or "Liz" shares the radical idea that, instead of the rare person "being" a genius, all of us "have" a genius. Listen to her TED speech on nurturing creativity at: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius.html

The quote d'jour follows: "The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair." --Mary Heaton. 

Duly noted.  California, here I come.