I’ve started off this year enrolled in an eight-week creativity class. Me, a 30-year veteran of the creative life. You’d think I’d know it all by now, but I sometimes need to sharpen my creative tools or be reminded why this work matters.
As part of our homework for this week, the instructor suggested we write the words “No expectations” on five sticky notes and put them up in places where we’d see them often. I put four of mine on the microwave, the refrigerator, my laptop, and the bathroom mirror. The last one I stuck to the TV so that when I finally sit down in the late evening to unwind, I’ll be reminded not to do that mind-racing thing where I start making expectations for the next day.
A few years ago, I headed into the new year with what seems at first glance like an opposing vow. I promised to live a life of visualization and devotion to the law of attraction. Which I took to mean expecting I would get the things I wanted. Sometimes I did, sometimes I didn’t.
In ruminating about expectations, though, I now realize how much of my days have been spent in anticipating an outcome. I’d head off to a party expecting to have a fun evening. Sometimes I did, sometimes I didn’t. I’d arrive for a blood draw with a pit in my stomach expecting them to have trouble finding my tricky veins. Sometimes they did, sometimes they didn’t. Expectations…
