stream of consciousness: on adventure, vulnerability, and gummy bears.

I feel as if I am getting boring.As is with most things I feel it in a reactionary sense.  This is probably not true.  I am probably not boring.But I feel it. I feel this tiny scurrying in my soul like a baby mouse running on hardwood floor.  I feel as if I am teetering on the edge, as if I am being identified with so much on the outside that my journey on the inside is lacking some stimuli.I need an adventure.  Not a huge trip to a fancy island (which I do have planned, by the by, hollaaaaa), or a jaunt off to Rome.  But tiny, microscopic adventures from the inside out.  Little moments that take my breath away.  I feel a fire missing and that scares me a lot.Last weekend I sang for others for the first time in three years (omg).  I can't get it out of my head.  It was a tiny adventure - a small moment with huge meaning.  It really had nothing to do with my voice or the "performance."  Because it felt nothing like a performance, and that is the very first time in my life I've felt that.  Ever.It was an out-of-body and deeply internal experience all at once.  It was about giving.  What can I give?  What do they need?  What do I need?  How do we need to be healed, together?  And of course I heard myself and of course I sunk deep into the acoustics of hardwood floor and high ceiling.  And darkness. That helped.  And the unexpected; the fact that no one knew it was me.  I could give anonymously.  Which honestly, is my favorite.I was recently asked by my friend Elisa if I ever feel vulnerable being so in-public and up front (which I don't really believe I am, but I guess it is all relative).  And how I get myself into that vulnerable space.  In my life both in the past and in the present I put my soul on paper (or WordPress, rather), stand in front of cameras, sweat up on a platform, take a stage.  It's been my life.  But here is the deal: I don't feel I am being vulnerable.  To make a goal out of being vulnerable - that's like telling yourself to fall in love.  You can't fall in love by choice or by putting in hard work.  It just...happens.What others see in me as "vulnerable" is nothing more than honesty.  I am being honest.  I am raw, I am flawed, I am crazed, I am bare, I am on a journey and I am urging you to join me.  Let us search together, experience the highs and the lows and all the in-betweens.Yet this idea of vulnerability is so often met with trepidation.  Can I be vulnerable?  Should I be vulnerable?  Because somehow we've been taught to associate vulnerability with harm.  To be vulnerable is to be in danger.  And when I'm asked about my willingness to be vulnerable, asked how people respond to it, asked how I do it...there is a communication error.I'm not in danger.  I'm open to having my heart torn apart and open to sharing my whole self.  I am open to healing and giving.  At the root of you and of me there is a pull to give and heal.  Others, ourselves, both at once.We all have the ability to self-heal.  We all have the tools we need to soothe ourselves. But it's the distractions, the contradictions, the battle inside us that gets in the way.  We are all good at self soothing - it's just accessing that power, and being not only brave enough but self-trusting enough to access that power, that is the problem.  We view vulnerability as the danger from which we need healing.  Yet vulnerability is actually the honesty that gives us the power to heal.I don't know where I am going with all this.  This talk of adventures, of vulnerability, of being boring but not bored in the least.  I think....I don't know....I think that my tiny little adventure in the dark yoga room with 40 or 50 or howevermany bodies sitting and feeling with their eyes closed just shifted my life ever so slightly to a place of the purity of intention.  And the power of intention, intention to give and simply experience from the inside out.  Every moment can be an adventure if we allow it.  There is nothing so beautiful as the present and who we are in this very moment.  Oh so battered by everything and nothing, we're all just giving to each other.  And my take on what is truly an adventure has been forever redefined.  And I now see these huge defining turns I've been taking personally and professionally, and I wonder how much of those turns were (are) the adventure, and how much the steps in the turn were (are) the adventure.  Am I boring without the large sweeping gestures?While some of what we do might not seem like much - a song in the dark, an eye-opening multi-hour conversation with friends, a massage in the middle of the workweek, helping an old lady cross the street, the mere decision to go on a yoga retreat, gummy bears when we should probably be prepping for a photo shoot (hi.), speaking our true feelings instead of our false reactions - these are our daily adventures.  These are so very far from "boring."These...these are all I am.  And I am becoming more than ok with that.