"Rebels are We, Born to Be Free...Just Like the Fish in the Sea!"

My blog, "Take it to the Limit," takes a new turn today. Gone, done, did, is the plea for the financing of my dream. It's happened. Thank you! And now, I move on to my work, my real work. So this blog may turn to a new direction, more of what I am, more of where I have been going but did not know until NOW. Until I witnessed that indeed to ask, and ask, and ask, and ask, pays off. If you don't have, it's because you haven't asked. Even if it takes 51 years.

In six weeks, I will be completely free to write. I can get up at five in the morning and write and be with myself alone - or on a crowded ferry headed to the Statue of Liberty - until the equally wee hours of another morning if I choose. The creativity that is coming with this surge of freedom is surreal. Suddenly wordy Sheela is at a loss for words. But they are there. Stuck deeply down in the muck of my soul. This summer is a summer of excavation and exploration. I am the kid in the candy store. I've been sent to Disneyland. I am in Nirvana.

Yesterday when I went to school to tell my boss, crazy things happened prior. I did a shitload of laundry earlier in the day that left me fried after pulling the granny cart with the massive loads up five flights only to jam it into the ironwork of the hallway next to my neighbor's file cabinet out for removal. I had a meltdown. What if the benefactor refused and regained her senses? What if, what if, what if?! I festered in my stew of disbelief until Leila came out, yanked the cart and me up and out of my misery and told me everything would be alright and why didn't I call her and tell her I had this mountain of clothes outside the door?!

I went to work, staggering and mumbling incoherently only to discover the cap on my bottled water had not been tightly screwed on when I shoved it into my bag. My gradebook was soaked. How prophetic. I arrived at school, late, and my students in my first class announced they had not yet seen the second half of North Country, part of their notetaking assignment for essay number three. So I went up the hallway, got the tv cart and tv and hauled it back to the classroom only to get to the doorway and to feel the entire mass tilting toward the floor! My toiling with the granny cart had strengthened me enough to shove my foot under the now missing part of the cart and to grab the television with one hand and still hold onto the cart. I called for my students and one ran back up the hallway to find the missing wheel. We reattached everything and I put the movie on and told them I'd be right back. I knew now was the time to tell my boss.

She looked at me at first with anxiety. I was leaving her with a large load of students. This was going to be one of my heavier semesters, I was sure of it, and why not, I needed the money. She tried to coax me into teaching a few days a week until she realized I really was gone. And then she looked at me with "new eyes" that told me she understood that I had found "the hole in the net," as Deepak Chopra says, "and was swimming out to my own reality."

Funny thing is on Saturday, before I ever knew my reality was coming, I walked my street where three trees line the park across from my building. I've stared at those trees for now ten years. In my spiritual studies, I look at those trees to represent the way nature does not resist and is what it is. Those trees have taught me a lot in this decade. I looked at them after not looking at them for quite a while. I've been long in discontent and constant misery. But I looked at them on Saturday and again they told me to be myself. Resist not.

This morning the meltdown is gone and I am here. I can see my summer. The consistency. And still the unknown. My mind wants me to start worrying again. What if, what if, what might come?

I'm not resisting anymore. The netting that held me is gone. It's time to swim.

Free.