Paddling My Canoe

As one goes through life, one learns that if you don’t paddle your own canoe, you don’t move. — Katherine Hepburn

 

I awoke at 5 this morning with a letter running through my head that I needed to write down. Nothing to do but get up and write it. I opened e-mail to send it and there was today’s “Inspiring Quotes” offering by Katherine Hepburn. So I put my canoe in the water and started paddling and 2½ hours later, thought I should haul it ashore and have a little breakfast. 

 

Unlike the real canoe I sometimes paddle in Upper Michigan’s Lower Herring Lake, there were no morning birds singing the day awake, no glint of sunlight on the rippling water, no Thoreauvian awe of the beauties of this world. Just the tap-tap of the laptop keys as I sent out to some six different mailing lists the announcements of the film on PBS, my SF Jazz concert video now available, various upcoming workshops. Then came all the Mailer-Daemons (what does that actually mean?) and deleting obsolete e-mails from my lists. All this paddling (and more) to reach the shore of the work I was born to do so I have opportunities to keep doing it and spread the work I’ve already done. I hope Katherine Hepburn would be proud of me. 

 

PS Alongside the paddling your own canoe metaphor, there’s the more negative “tooting one’s own horn,” meant as a reminder to stop drawing attention to yourself and for goodness sakes, can you be a little more humble? But hey, if you’re a trumpet player, tooting your own horn is exactly what you have to do! No one else is going to toot it for you. 

 

I was talking to a friend in New Orleans yesterday and suddenly he said, “Dang! I wish were on Facetime. I just passed someone playing trumpet while riding his bicycle!” 

 

Now if only he could somehow do that while paddling his canoe!