Friday, August 15, 2008

Getting going

How ridiculous is it that my brain wastes time trying to decide if I will write on this blog or in my notebook. According to my own tradition, I write in a journal, a kept journal that no eyes see but my own unless I permit it. But there it is. I find myself trying to decide if this will be viewable by others (a sentence that will have little worth if I do not in fact publish this). I also then wonder again about the physical difference between typing and writing, and if typing ruminations somehow bastardizes them, as most of my typing occurs for business manners. Is all this the product of excess brain space? It seems not, as I truly have plenty of things to think about currently, but seem to need to take the time for the ruminations to play out. At the same time, as I sit here after having read a book for awhile, I wonder why, in a time that I am getting ready to leave a lot of the familiar and comfortable behind, why it is that I sit here by myself and do things that would be considered time-passers?

In reading Walden this morning (oh yes, I am SOO academic and wonderful), it made me think about the value of company. I had noticed myself, in planning my morning and afternoon, not wanting to be with anyone for that fact that I would be with so many someones for quite a period of time later on in the day, and I wanted to enjoy it rather than be annoyed by it. It seems that every available moment should be spent with people I care about and will miss when I am gone, but that logic becomes skewd when set against what I actually want. For the relationships that matter, they will remain in tact and maybe even get stronger. I do not see why I need to guilt myself into spending all my time with people. People will be here, as will things. I am somewhat starving for newness and independence, and perhaps this is why I want to spend some time 'alone' in my surroundings before I leave them. I think I am also annoyed by the fact that I had imagined I would feel so much more free at this point. I still have a ton of stuff holding me down. Even though it is packed away at my parents house, it is not packed or sorted through as efficiently as I wished. I wanted to get rid of even more stuff I felt like I did not need, and planned on doing so when I packed. But putting on the show ate up the time to have actually followed through with such a goal. I would not trade the show for the world, but it certainly did get in the way of what I perceived would be my departure. I have put an unnecessary amount of thought into rationalizing why I didn't get through everything the way I wished (as I generally put an unnecessary amount of thought into basically anything). For example, I know that when I settle somewhere for the next time, I will not want to put the time, energy or money into finding new furniture (and will probably not have much store of those listed resources anyway). It also seems a waste to have to go through the unnecesary monetary transactions of selling my furtinture, only to turn around and try and find some to purchase upon my return. I have also thought about how, in the grand scale of the world, having a compact amount of things at one house in one town in one state in one country on the face of the large earth, it really ins't much. I just need to get myself to the point where I forget about the fact that it is there, and if I REALLY want to get rid of a bunch, I can do it at Christmas.

That is another mental stressor in relation to how I wanted things to go. My desire for unplanned adventure and cutting ties has been stimied by the fact that I know the next points that I will be back in MN - for Christmas and all of next summer. Weddings seem like a ridiculous reason for coming home all summer, but they are also moments within friends lives that I do not wish to miss. Despite my gypsy syndrom, I place a lot of importance in relationships and moments.

In the midst of all this, I have thought about people asking what I have done today, me responding 'nothing' and them being angered by the fact that I did not call to try and plan to spend some more time with them. I wish they would call me if they wanted that to happen. Granted, I am sure most have figured that I am hella busy with everything I need to get done to move, and I figured I would be more so than I am at this point. I think my freak out about grad schools on Tuesday has forced me to take a step back and let life play out as it will. I know that i big shit (turning in my keys, checking on where to get my deposit, the show videos and such getting sent out) will all happen in due course because they are important and I am not an idiot. That being said, i think I have laid back a bit to ut my faith into this concept. Along the way to that, I have felt small tinges of what people generally consider boredom. I guess I hesitate to accept calling it boredom, because my 'idleness' is not due to inability or lack of desire to think of anything better to do, but by an invisible force calling for me to learn how to stop in my tracks. I have a veritable obsession with not wanting to waste any of my time. I guess that I have so much that I am interested in and care to do with my life that it is hard for me to justify sitting and doing anything that will not lead toward an end goal for my interests. However, I also frequently tell people that life is for living, and part of that is this idea of 'enjoying oneself.' I think I enjoy myself most when I am working. This goes back to the book I have been reading as well. A happy man is a working man, one that values his energy and time and wants to do something with it. For me, that is creating things that make people think about who and where they are. It is quite ironic, in light of that, that I myself find it so damn difficult to spend time thinking abcooout who I am and where I am. I know those are thoughts that are always operating subconciously for me, but I think they are forced into the subconcious because my direct conciousness is always being spent on other, external things. These external things are things I absolutely love, but I seem to love myself as well, so why not spend some direct time on that?

This seems to be the purpose of where I am now, sitting at a coffee shop byself, occasionally conversing with strangers, when I could be spending time with loved ones that are important to me and who I will miss. I think I am leveling more with Adam now on how he behaved before leaving for Estonia. Amount of time spent does not necessarily correlate with how much you love someone or how important they are. Sometimes there is such a thing as too much time together. It helps you really enjoy when you ARE with those people. Thinking about this makes it easier for me to accept why my friends from high school and I do not see each other nearly as much as we used to, or as much as we probably could. A lot of the time, my mind automatically jumps to the idea that they would rather spend time with their boyfriends, and maybe this is true. But that does not devalue the time we want to spend with one another, for the reasons contemplated above.

There are few people with whom I want to spend more time than most. I think this is a revelation that has lead me to my next adventure. I am content alone, and even more so when spending the majority of my time on things that matter to me. People matter to me very much, but I do not control how they are scheduled or how they will affect me. Creating dance, taking class, going on trips, all such things are things that are scheduled and controlled by me. I do not think my enjoyment of such things stems from the fact that I am a control-freak, but from the fact that I can see directly how they will push me forward, as a person who desires to spend all of her moments moving, physically and metophorically.

I love the turn-over of a coffee shop. Some people stop in only to get their coffee to go to fuel the rest of their day, and others, like me today, hang around as if they have no timeline. You can never be sure of who you will sit by talk to, or if you will ever interact with them again, but those moments, as they exist, often seem more honest them moments you experience with people with whom you interact on a daily basis. With the new ones, there is less known and therefore more to talk about. This certainly does not discredit the old ones, it is just a different kind of interaction.

As I write this, the sun is hitting my computer and my face more and more, and making me check the clock and be antsy to be at the beach. But I am also antsy to be writing this. There is simply no way for me to entirely please myself. If it is important, I'll get there?

I have been doing a 'year check-in' quite a bit lately. I often find myself pondering what I was doing at this time last year, and how I managed to find myself to what I am doing now. This time last year, I was still in the house on Como, though alone with no one around, but having just come off a long and stressful prep week of arts in. Thinking back on that now as Kris was there this week, it made me realize how time just suspends when you are in that building. This is certainly a thought that has occured to me before, but it rearranged itself and came to the forefront of my mind in thinking about how long prep week seemed when I was there, and how it seemed to fly by when Kris was there. At this time last year, I was also starting to think about choreography for Shakopee, getting ready to teach dance classes at the Dance Xchange, starting at the Southern. Since then, I have put on two volunteer events, produced two shows, built the volunteer program to be more solid and professional, took the most amazing workshop of my life in Chicago and found another place I want to study and belong with, danced in 7 shows, learned to be (almost) completely financially independent, learned to enjoy someones company on a longer and more frequent basis, travelled to South Dakota to visit Jesse, successfully free-lance marketed three shows (one of which I got paid for), I have had friendships disappait and reignite, learned much more about lights than I ever expected (but certainly wanted to), moved twice (three if you count the majority of my stuff being brought back home), lived alone, discovered that it wasn't for me, came to the realization that jobs are for money and work is for fulfillment, come to the realization that I will never have 100% of people in my life understand or appreciate that, come to the realization that I have plenty of people who do and for that I am grateful, taken yoga with my mom, 'broken up' and 'got back together,' I am sure the list could go on. Sometimes when my thoughts happen upon these moments, I simply desire to list them.

Work at the fair
Fly out the first
Locate new place of residence/ new people of residence
Find my way into Calgary to dance
Find a job
Apply for grad schools

Caravan on.