M. Suzanne Terry

Okay, so technically this is coffee. With a shot of vanilla bourbon (DO IT.) But beer is sold at this place (Harvest House, Denton TX)…so…close enough?

When I think of country – particularly the patch of country where I grew up – several words come to mind. I think open. I think chaos and hierarchy, both at the same time. I think free.

I think wild.

Wild is what happens when a west Texas wind meets no resistance. When it goes and goes, and stopping is not even a thought because there’s nothing in its way to make stopping a necessity.

I love that wild. I love moments when I can be wild like that – my unencumbered self, embodying all I’ve learned and all that I’ve taken from those lessons. Not what I’ve had to be (for whatever reason), but what I am.

I originally wrote this rambly post when I was on my third beer. The third beer is my favorite beer, when I’ve pushed past the sleepy of one and the mellow of two and landed on the open wild of three.

Of course, I cannot always be on my third beer. That’s called alcoholism, and I’m neither willing nor financially able to sustain that sort of lifestyle. Having always to have help from a beverage to get to this coveted wild would mean that despite my best intentions to embrace wild, I’ve settled for my comfort zone instead.

Being comfortable and being myself are not the same thing. I sometimes confuse one for the other, though. Usually when I’m seeking out something that is comfortable to me, it’s not out of freedom but out of fear or as a result from outside pressure – because it would be easier to go along than go forward.

• When I over-schedule myself so that I can not only feel productive but have a full calendar to prove that I am working hard toward the things I care about *cough* to absolutely no one because no one has ever asked to see my calendar to explain myself *cough*
• When I say yes to things because they are good ideas without stopping to think about whether they’re actually mine to do or whether they’d be better accomplished by someone else
• When I don’t do something I really want to do – something that would be mine – because I’ve hyper-committed to everything else (see above)

Part of my year of wild is rediscovering where the boundary lies between mere habit and real vision and learning to land on the latter side.