I am the project: a PhD in being me

"... This is the templeof my adult alonenessand I belongto that alonenessas I belong to my life..."- excerpted From David Whyte's "The House of Belonging"

So, you'll remember that, this summer, I was choosing whether or not to enroll in a PhD program at Pacifica University in California. And if you've been following along, you'll remember that I made that decision: I won't be going.This was a big decision, involving a commitment of three years time and over a hundred thousand dollars in tuition. (Translated, that means, one hundred thousand dollars of debt - because I don't have that kind of cash lying around.)The program, with its emphasis on Archetypal Psychology, Mythology and Dreamwork,  was REALLY calling to me but with reflection, I could see that it called because it had ALWAYS called - I mean, that work has called to me all of my life. And I've answered the call. I am already pretty studied in that work - and already working with it in my own way. And going to Pacifica would have challenged some pretty important choices I'd already made:

• the choice to live debt-free and stress-free,
• the choice to build relationship and intimacy with the people close to me,
• the choice to be close enough to offer support to my mother and her caregiving team;
• and the highest choice, I think - to move through each day led by my conversation with guidance. In other words, the choice to listen to and to follow my heart. 

And my heart was whispering, more emphatically each day: You do not need this program to complete yourself. You are already on that path. It's time to walk it your way. It was time, also,  to discern exactly what 'my way' might be.My heart used all of its tools to get my attention.Desire.Memory.Regret.Sorrow.And envy - my heart sideswiped me with envy. It happened when I  was sitting with a group of friends I've known since childhood and, as everyone was discussing their travels, I felt myself suddenly sliding backward - as if the chair I was sitting on had wheels and was being pulled out of the circle, as my friends compared hotels and beaches, safaris and excursions. I wish I'd done that.I wish I'd been there.That sounds amazing.I want that, too. I remembered how, back when I was 19, 20, 21, I was absolutely certain I'd be pulling my travel bag through airports, filling my passport with colorful stamps for the rest of my life. And at that age, I was. I lived in Paris for four months. I ate the spiciest curry I've ever tasted - inedible -in London. I sunbathed (in my underwear - I'd forgotten my swimsuit) on the Costa Brava and, later that evening, I had my first taste of Calamari. Sautéed in garlic and oil, I loved the strange fish - until the waitress, who didn't speak a word of English, managed to communicate what calamari was by sketching an octopus on a paper napkin. The next night, I was in Barcelona - wine-soaked and barefoot - dancing in a moonlit, cobblestoned courtyard. When I was 25, I returned to Paris with my mother. At 26, my husband and I traveled through France by train, staying in a beachfront hotel in Nice.When our children were small, I filled a scrapbook with clipping from Travel and Leisure and Conde Nast Traveler and National Geographic. I wanted us to SEE and experience EVERYTHING together!But it would not turn out that way: my husband didn't like traveling and money was tight. When I started working and there was money, there was little time for journeying. Wistful, every New Year's Eve, as cataloged the trips we hadn't taken, I'd resolve: This year, things will be different. Over time, I replaced my love of travel with (an addiction to) NYC restaurants and a few local sidewalk cafes. I packed away - or lost... or maybe, burned - the travel scrapbook. My son, who inherited my travel bug, has now seen more of the world than I have and our daughter, currently in Hawaii, is on her way to meeting his record.I tell you this to underline the climate in which I was making that Pacifica decision last summer: It was a time of longing. My heart seemed to be expanding, and returning to a kind of 'original' shape. Though I'd thought the life of travel and discovery was lost to me, my heart was reaching for it anyway.Which was part of the lure of Pacifica - all the way over on the other side of the country. To attend, I'd need to travel to California once a month and that felt like a good compromise - and one that I began to dream, might get me traveling again to other places.And that thought - right there - was the clue that began to open the door to my decision. I was thinking of Pacifica as a stepping-stone that would somehow grant me permission to do what I really wanted to do, which was travel.And if that was the case, I realized, that 100,000 dollars would be much better invested in some good luggage and airline tickets.Now, instead of a PhD program, I'm embarked on a living "Personal PhD" project of my own design. (And I must thank Lianne Raymond for that phrase. It planted a seed of bright hope, which instantly started constellating in me.)It begins with this sweet small 'room of my own,' a rented office with three huge windows overlooking a working horse farm - in a building filled with artists making art. Here, I plant the seed that my discussion with Lianne (and you) lit in me. It is here that I am outlining the curriculum - and the syllabus - for my next great adventure: the next three years of my life.  So far, it looks like this:Daily devotional practice - yoga, meditation, reading and writing.Art-making, Photography. Collage. On my own and in groups, with you.Teaching yoga, as a step toward teaching my own work on wider platforms in 2016.Dream work. Study. And research projects - and the beautiful book projects which will inevitably emerge from this.Interviews with creative soul friends.Selected Classes - which fascinate, stretch and perhaps, scare me a little. (Like Mathematics, Music and Advanced Astrology.)And of course, great big sigh of relief, I will travel to the places which have called to my heart for a very long time.As I set myself these challenges, I feel buoyed, energized and alive with hope. I plan to live this heart-led, soul-fed journey out loud and I invite you to come along, and perhaps, to join me on a Personal PhD project of your own.Yesterday, as years of notes - years of my own work - spiraled around me on the floor, I saw how all of it had constellated this moment in time, and this project.I am the project.I am the PhD of my own life.