I’ve always believed that there’s much to the world that most people never see, and that if you look closely and openly the answers to life’s questions are usually right there waiting for you to discover them. When I was younger, there was an interesting phenomenon where if I had a truly pressing question on my mind, one of those deep existential crises that I couldn’t quite explain to anyone else, I would head to a bookstore or library and wander aimlessly. More often than not, the answer would come – maybe in a snippet of conversation, maybe in part of a headline of a magazine, but usually in the form of a book falling off a shelf when no one else was around. And if I took that book and paid attention, the answer I was seeking was usually in those pages – maybe not a direct one, but one that I would know when I saw it. It was like I was playing an epic puzzle game and the Universe was feeding me clues.
As I got older and my Star Trek-ian wish of e-readers came into reality, it was harder for the Universe to drop hints literally at my feet. Much like in video games, as I levelled up, I had to pay closer attention to my surroundings to keep up with the clues presented. Once it was a slip from a fortune cookie fluttering down from the clear blue sky. Another time, during a crisis of faith, I asked to be shown something specific to know I was on the right path and looked down to see a shiny five-pence at my feet, glinting in the moonlight (there’s a bigger story behind that but we’ll save for another time). The four-leafed clovers are cue that comes up a lot. Yet another was the magic appearance of the sandbox ornaments (TURTLE sandboxes, no less) right at a very critical moment.
So the clues are there, if you’re willing to step back and see them.
Now let’s go back a few steps – I came into 2015 with a renewed sense of purpose and the mindset that it was time to show the world exactly what I was capable of. My goal wasn’t to make a splash. My goal was to cannonball into the deep end with such a force that the bystanders looking on would be soaked to the bone and wondering what the hell just happened. I had spent the previous eight years gathering the pieces and setting the stage for this moment. I had found the team I’d been looking for, I had made my promises, and I had stated my ambitious but reachable goals publicly for all to see. I wasn’t hiding anymore – it was time to start connecting all the pieces and show everyone else how they connected (this part is very important). I knew the work that was going to be involved before I went in, that I’d probably be spending the year running on little sleep and much caffeine, that I’d have to figure out that balance between friendship and business. I knew I’d have a lot of dissention at the beginning while I got things started and would have to show a lot of patience when I didn’t want to. For this to work, I had to leave my comfort zone behind and be braver than I really am.
That brings us to the past couple of weeks.
Realistically, things are going about the way I expected they would on all fronts. My projects are progressing as they should be at this stage. The snafus we encountered thus far are the ones I expected, and we’re ironing them out as we go along. The resistance I’ve encountered came from exactly the people I expected and we’re making progress there, too. All in all, it’s going like I thought it would.
The problem is that even though I know we are where we’re expected to be, that things really are moving forward and they take time, I am not a patient person. I will always be harder on myself than anyone else. I do dwell on the details, because that’s how I remember what works and what doesn’t and what weird things crop up so I can fix them and prepare for next time. Most people don’t seem to realize the incredible amount of work and planning that goes into making a finished product look effortless. And as much as I hate to admit this on paper, even the most seasoned veterans – ESPECIALLY the most seasoned veterans – can feel daunted sometimes trying to keep up, even if they’re on track.
And that’s when it’s most important to take a step back and pay attention to what the Universe is telling you.
For me, there were three key instances this week that stood out to remind me “yes, you can do this, and yes, you’re on the right track.” The first was something that happened at an event I was running for work – one of my tasks is to run information tables at community college events to help show students how to bridge the work they completed in their two-year associates programs into a four-year bachelor’s degree. We’d had one of these events earlier in the week where absolutely everything that could go wrong did, and even though I knew none of it was my fault, my confidence still took a hit. The logical part of my brain was screaming “this happens! Keep rolling!” while the shade of doubt in my other ear whispered “maybe you pushed yourself a little too far this time.” So I went into Thursday with mixed feelings and highly tempered expectations, especially when I found out last-minute that I’d be running the table solo (!!!).
But I dressed the part. When I stopped into Sheetz to grab a drink on my way in, the lyrics I referenced at the beginning started playing as I walked into the store and they’d just re-stocked my favorite (hard to find) green Coke. Good start. I walked into that room with a smile and a greeting, and had four people stop by my table before I’d even set up (“Is that a green Coke?” “Why yes it is.” “That’s pretty cool. So where are you from?”). I engaged with the other school reps around me. Conversations were had, and passersby joined in. In short, I rocked that room – I remembered who I was, conjured my little vortex of awesome, and the world responded. But it was a conversation I had with one of the school’s professors towards the end of my visit that stood out: he came up with the opener of “I’m not sure why, but I feel like I’m supposed to tell you something,” and proceeded to talk about the importance of vibrancy and active engagement in making something stand out in the minds of one’s audience. The gist was that lasting success was all about putting oneself out there – reaching out, making eye contact, not hiding behind the safety and anonymity of a virtual world but walking boldly and confidently out and doing the things others hold back from. “Again,” he concluded, “you’re already doing that, so I don’t know why but…I just felt the overwhelming need to tell you that.”
Touche, Universe, touche.
Part two came later that afternoon when my latest issue of mental_floss came in. My Twitter followers saw this part already, but Jessanne Collin’s editorial at the beginning cemented what that professor had started on. She was speaking of her surprise on finding a rock star she’d looked up to as a personal icon felt as if she wasn’t successful because she didn’t hit the goal she’d originally intended on. To share Jessanne’s thoughts:
“I’m fascinated by how elusive the feeling [of success] seems to be among very accomplished humans. Does anyone ever really feel “successful?”…The answer to that question – what is success made of? – is that there is no answer. It looks different for each of us. Up close, it doesn’t always look like success: it looks like hard work, help from friends, or pure luck. A lot of the time it feels like failing!…Our point is, just as there’s no single definition of success, there’s no single pathway to it, either. And that’s where things get interesting.”
Wow, talk about synchronicity. Ok, Universe, you have my attention now.
The third piece came about this morning, and followed closer to the original way the Universe liked to communicate. To give some context, one of my Rivalcast projects has been to work on finding new ways of building community through public-facing events, and specifically building our yearly Orbfest ghost hunt into a bigger and more interactive event. To that end, I’ve been working with volunteers at the Brinton Lodge in Douglassville, PA for the past few weeks to secure a location and date for Orbfest 2015, start building marketing campaigns to bring the RCM community into it, and expand our sandbox to the general public to make this a true Rivalcast event. To be fair, I’ve done a lot of work in event planning and such before with a lot of success, and I intentionally kept the activities scaled back this year while we figure out logistics and flow (since this really is the first Orbfest we’re opening to the general public). So it’s not anything really new or super huge, but as with anything important to me there is a certain level of anxiety in my head that goes along with it.
Because we’re making the official announcement on Sunday’s Ghost in the Podcast (live shows Sunday at 5 PM ET on Twitch.TV/Rivalcastmedia, folks!), I wanted to give some backstory of the location to our listeners and I asked one of the guys at the Lodge about where to find some of the stories. Specifically, there is an author and folklorist by the name of Charles J. Adams III who, along with some friends, has been collecting and publishing Pennsylvania ghost stories for years. A huge fan, I have many (though not all) of his 20+ books, and as he is a native of the same county where the Lodge stands, I knew he’d collected the stories. So after getting the book title from one of the volunteers (Adams had just done a reading recently at the Lodge, so they knew exactly which one had the story I was looking for), I ordered it so I’d have some idea of other local stories we might be able to investigate. On a whim, I also ordered one of his other Berks County collections, the first one he’d ever published.
I ordered both Prime in the hopes of having them before Sunday’s show, only to get a notice an hour later that the one I needed was on back order and would ship next week. Shit. Well, I could do some more internet research, I guess.
But the book I bought on a whim came in yesterday, which brings us to this morning and where the third clue comes in. The edition I ordered, from 1997, was the second edition of this particular book. The first edition was published all the way back in 1982, and as with most first books from independent publishers, it was wrought with frustrations and silly mistakes: working on an exceptionally limited budget (gee, who does that sound like?), Adams was expecting to “insulate my attic with thousands of unsold ghost books” and instead ended up receiving orders faster than the printer could make them. Pretty impressive for what the author himself described as a very crude manuscript. But then he talked about the other snafus – many of the first run of books came back with failed bindings, out of place pages, typos (some the typesetter’s fault, some the author’s for not proofreading). The worst part, and the one he spent a lot of time discussing in the intro to his second edition, was that somehow the typesetter missed three entire pages of the manuscript, resulting in the entire conclusion of the first story being omitted in the printing. As Adams states, “That first book on ghosts and legends in my native county was never intended to be the first of three ghost books in Berks and the start of an unimaginable journey through haunted places in four states. Looking back after about 20 books and inestimable experiences in researching, writing, editing, and publishing, I still haven’t gotten it right yet, but my partner and publisher Dave Seibold give it our best with every new book.”
Huh. That’s…hitting a little close to home, now.
And then Hobbes came bounding through the room and I accidentally dropped the book. It landed face down, pages open, which isn’t entirely normal as this is a brand-new paperback and the binding’s not broken in yet. So I picked up the book and looked at the page it decided to open itself up to.
The title of the story was called “Dine With the Spirits.”
It was the original research and story Adams wrote about the history and hauntings of the Brinton Lodge.
thefourthcastle.com 