E Ellis Allen (girlonstilts.com)

When I was young, my older siblings and I would hike up a mountain, our eyes searching the barbed sticker bushes and loose rocks for collectible bottle caps or Rattlesnakes. We were adventurers, oblivious to the risks, loving the journey, captured in the moment.

Once on top, we would catch our breaths, survey the valley below, and bask in our triumph. I can still feel the hot wind on my back and the burn of swirling dirt in my eyes. I remember the view from that peak was amazing. I loved it. I owned it.

Lately, I don’t love it, and I rarely own whatever I do. I’ve forgotten that feeling of basking —that pause, that exquisite exhilaration after getting to the destination.

As a child, the whole experience from beginning to end and back again was pleasurable. But now? Now, I think in terms of the journey and then the very next one. I never stop to see what I’ve done. I’m only eager to get on with what’s next.

Since last September, I’ve been on a quest to turn my screenplay into a novel. For five months, my world revolved around layering the plot, bolstering characters, weaving hints, and adding touches of humanity — everything I’ve ever learned about storytelling. Then, I was done.

But I didn’t take a breath. I plunged forward.

My book is now in the hands of Beta readers — those bookish types who’ll devour my manuscript and tell me if it works before I get it published and it’s out there in the wild.

Still, I didn’t take a beat, not one moment of pleasant reflection. Instead, I’m trapped in the torturous snare of waiting. It’s a peculiar kind of torment, a blend of anticipation and dread that gnaws at the corners of my day every day.

It begins as a windstorm of ‘what-ifs’ whipping through my mind — what if my words don’t resonate with the Betas and they dismiss my story? What if instead of seeing my work as precious bottle caps, they see me as a venomous thing, a Rattlesnake to be destroyed?

The darkest parts of my imagination run rampant, conjuring scenarios where my fictional world provokes rage — could my werewolves accidentally incite political unrest?

Or even worse, what if nothing happens, no emotions are evoked, no insight is gained, and I’m met with the slow burn of indifference — a constant pebble in my eye that no number of tears can clear?

It’s ridiculous, I know, and improbable! But still, within the solitary confines of waiting, even the most outlandish fear feels possible. However, I suspect that even beyond the inflated sense of doom and gloom I create, my biggest problem is I’ve forgotten how to bask.

I’m not a bask-er — those people who look at what they’ve done, lie in their sunny output, and bathe in its warmth like a tanning bed, exhilarated in the baked-in afterglow of accomplishment. I wish I were.

No, I’m a head-down, do the work, get it done, and repeat kind of gal. I wish I weren’t because what’s the point of doing anything if I can’t enjoy the result?

We’re all familiar with the concept, “it’s the journey, not the destination, that counts,” indicating that the journey is more important than where you end up. But what if the thought is simply unfinished? What if the true reward is the journey to the destination as well as the immediate moment afterward — a time to take a breath and marvel at that great and terrible climb up that mountain? 

This is what eludes me.

Like a buried treasure waiting to be excavated or an echo I’d thrown into the vast valley and forgotten to hear rebound, I’m missing that sense of quiet glory that happens immediately after success. 

Because all the work of the hike means nothing if I don’t take a moment and admire the view once I get there.

When was a moment that you stopped immediately after and looked at what you’ve accomplished? What are some things you do to pause and celebrate the journey and the destination?

For a glimpse into my latest work: https://girlonstilts.com/2024/01/31/where-wolves-are/