Well, I took a lot of trips this summer and I really enjoyed the heck out of them. I got to see all of my family in the whole USA, and then I immersed myself in the worlds created by my spiritual families out in the woods somewhere, bringing back so much learning, so many insights about my path, and so many new projects that I want to pursue. In the process, I used up all my vacation days and spent all my money, so now I am saying “sorry, I can’t” to a lot of fun plans being made in my vicinity.

When my partner told me the dates he planned on going to California for our only niece’s first birthday, I got a little bummed. And when I thought about what it’s gonna be like around the holidays when he is all excited about the music he’s singing with the choir, I felt a little bit panicked. Like, sure, right now I feel like I need to scale back, cut down, and prune some things out of my life, but what about when the fun is actually happening … somewhere else? How am I going to feel then? will I be kicking myself for the decisions I’m making now?

So I guess I need to get clearer on my motivations. And I can’t put the blame for my choices on external circumstances — like whether I have a lot of money or not. (The real question, anyway, is whether I feel myself to be abundant or not.) I have this nagging fear that if I let my negative perception of my financial condition to determine my choices, I will be making all bad decisions. Really I have to ask what the voice in my heart is telling me.

And she says, “Stay home.”

I am afraid of missing out on stuff, especially social stuff. I don’t have sufficient confidence in my own social abilities to think that I will have “enough” friends, “enough” interactions with other people, to keep me from feeling isolated, depressed, sad, jealous. So really it comes down to an inner battle between two scarcities — scarcity of money vs. scarcity of friends. And if that is the level on which I deal with the issue, NEITHER choice is going to feel quite right — I will end up with a nagging anxiety that the other scarcity is going to get out of control.

What I really must investigate within myself is what I am going to do about the pressing need I feel to go within, to explore the boundaries of my creativity, to see what is there on the edge of my awareness, wanting, waiting to come through. Is it worth it to cut fun trips and social activities in an attempt to bring the muse to the foreground, to listen to what is there? It’s an unknown. What if it’s nothing? A false alarm?

Maybe I just need to trust that there will be “enough” in the future — “enough” opportunities for connection — in fact, the opportunities are really infinite. Choosing to go within now, to pare down my activities, doesn’t have to mean I will have no friends.

And loneliness, jealousy, feeling left out — these are not unproductive states, maybe. They are teachers. They will teach me to have confidence in what is within me: infinity.