The Lion Sleeps Tonight

I have awful taste in music.

My top played song lists are where one hit wonders go to die. This week, my listening history prompted Spotify’s algorithm to suggest the theme song from Fraggle Rock, the University of Michigan’s marching band fight song, and a cover of What Makes You Beautiful sung entirely by children. At the time of writing, I’m listening to a version of Cotton Eyed Joe which has been extended for line dancing.

I am a dork. A big one.

This time last year, I was a dork pretty close to rock bottom. I was a wannabe writer with a drawer full of half finished manuscripts, a failed career in accounting, and a newly renounced drinking problem. My hobbies included removing my blackheads, filling bullet journals with tasks I would never finish (chapter one!...tomorrow), and throwing pillows at my headboard while I screamed.

Eventually, it got to the point where I either needed to finish some of those manuscripts or give up on my dreams and go back to a full time job, something I had told my boyfriend I’d rather go to actual prison (“at least they give you books there!”) then do. I got as far as applying to a government think tank and hated the thought of working full time so much that I wept silently through the entire phone interview.

All of this added up to the fact that while I hated the paralyzing fear of sitting in front of the blinking cursor, I hated the idea of giving up more. So after removing every blackhead from my face (and an extended pillow screaming session) I forced myself to try. I sat in front of that darn blinking cursor and stuck my headphones in and I typed some words. Not good ones, but words. This doesn’t have a triumphant finish, either - I gave up pretty soon after that, decided to reschedule it to tomorrow, and then celebrated by removing some blackheads.

I was going to go to bed.

But before I did, I picked up my phone. The Google Doc looked inviting, and the words pulled me in, and I decided that since I was inspired, I was going to make it last. I was going to take my screenplay and power my way through it, and this time, I was going to finish the thing.

As I was doing this, I heard it.

Weeheeheehee-de-hee-hee-ee-ee.

The opening wail of ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight” by The Tokens hit my headphones, and all of a sudden, things seemed different. Lighter. More playful. With their screeching harmonies burning through my eardrums, I found myself smiling. For the first time in months, I felt happy.

I felt silly.

I felt free.

As the fun and the joy and the peace fell over me, the fear started to slip away. It went back to the jungle, where the lion takes care of things like blackheads and bad interviews and the unfinished manuscript drawer. All of a sudden, I wasn’t a failed accountant or a former drunk or the kind of person who fears full time employment worse than death.

I was a writer. A writer doing her work.

Naturally, I did a flappy hand dance to celebrate (a combination between disco fever, baby shark, and Tina Belcher). Things started warming up: my inspiration came back to me in waves and the words came with it, flowing onto the page with ease I didn't even know existed.

The lion kept singing.

I kept writing.

The manuscript filled up.

My hope did too.

The lion might have slept that night, but I didn’t. I didn’t sleep much the next night, either - I was too busy having fun. For the first time in almost three years, I let myself remember what it felt like to just let myself write. To let myself play. And for the first time in my life, I finished my entire manuscript.

And then I did it again. Twice.

Around this time, I noticed a funny thing start happening to my Spotify playlists: the lion was no longer sleeping with the guilty pleasures and the 2AM deep cuts. He was awake, and he brought his friends.

I sailed with the Orinoco Flow. I did my flappy shark dance to ‘Lollipop’ by the Chordettes and then non-ironically did the same dance to Limp Bizkit. I bumped Nickelback, let Smash Mouth’s ‘All Star’ play into S Club 7 and then cranked up the soundtrack to Grease.

There was Andrew Lloyd Webber, and TV theme songs, and organ songs from baseball games. There were marching band routines. Meat Loaf.

Vanilla Ice.

The Circle of Life.

My playlists filled up with the guilty, the bad, the inane. My completed manuscripts got a drawer of their own. My dances got bigger, and stupider, and more flappy.

I smiled more.

I laughed.

I was kinder to my family. More compassionate to my friends. To myself.

As I let all my ‘guilty pleasures’ stop being guilty, I started to stop feeling guilty about other stuff, too. Like wearing my natural curls, or showing my blackheads at the grocery store.

Or choosing a career as a writer.

I'm not saying you need to listen to The Tokens to finish your manuscript, or subject yourself to my writing playlist, or even write stories at all. I’m saying you should listen to music because you like it, not because it’s cool to like. Do the dumb dances that make you happy. Write the projects you have your heart set on because you’re so committed to doing it you’d rather die than do anything else, not because you’re worried agents or publishers or readers will think you’re cool.

Do them, and then finish them.

And then roar.

The lion taught me that magic happens when you forget to look for it. When you’re at the end of your rope, and you just want to scream into pillows, there’s still hope. At the end of every tunnel, there's a light.

There’s a lion.

Last year, I never would have entered this contest at all. I would have waited for the perfect idea, put it in my bullet journal sixty one times, checked the astrology, waited for my progressed Mercury to go direct, and then removed some blackheads.

Last year, I would have sat in front of the cursor, letting that sad, scared, part of me tell me I’ll never be good enough to try.

But I didn’t.

My taste in music sucks. My neighbors probably hate me, and my boyfriend dreads my turn with the aux cord (the lion is coming). But the playlist of ‘songs that will only be disclosed upon my death’ is no longer, and even though that sad, scared part of me is still trying to tell me I’ll never be good enough, I stopped listening.

Because I’m listening to something else. And my lion?

He sleeps tonight.

With love,