Heading Out

Today's the day! My first shadow begins . . .

Before I go, I want to share one thing just so we’re clear, and just because it's important to me: I had no clue if this plan was going to work out. All sorts of tiny things happened that gave me the go-ahead to try—the original idea years ago, a sweet FaceTime date with TaylorMarie, the support of my parents. When I got back to school from spring break, I knew I get something in the works within the next week if it was going to work. I texted the amazing Rachel Carney; she sat at the table in my dorm room with me and sketched out a whole plan. We shot a video (the one that’s on the site now) and she edited the whole thing for me. I spent a handful of hours at Octane building the website (thx squarespace), embedded Rachel’s video, and rushed back to catching up on schoolwork.

At that point, there was no reason that this idea should work. At least that was my low-bar expectation. I knew, though, that I just needed to do my part of the work. As long as I did that, I knew I’d be fine with any amount of feedback. From that point, shadows submissions came—first my parents, then my roommate, then my best friend Rah. Then someone named Jan, someone who told me I could visit her ranch and shadow her as she did physical therapy. So I’ll be at Jan’s later this week, my second stop of the trip. Second of fourteen—other people popped into my inbox and I set them on my map. I’m not even sure if I’d say yes to this offer from the other side, if someone asked to shadow me, but fourteen people bought the idea. That is what Liz Gilbert would call big magic. That’s what I would call common creativity, a lil thread of divine connecting all of humanity’s hearts on a string like lights on a Christmas tree. Or like stops on a map.