Feb 6, 2011

That's the day everything changes.

Rain

Today's supposed to be a celebration. It's the last of the year, so there's supposed to be sleeping in, drinking, dining, and partying.

At 330, I was up. At 5:30 I was hiking. An hour in, at the furthest point from home, I got caught in a thunderstorm. I'd taken a different path than normal, which broke my rule to always be near the trains. There was only one way to get home through the storm, and it was just to plow through. The rain soaked my jacket, my jeans, and was cold to boot. It just was one of the worst hours of my life. I had absolutely no control of my environment, I did everything I could to keep what I had on me dry, and in the end just had to hope for the best and make it home.

This is the year coming up. There's a lot not under my control. I've got things in motion, but I can't control the outcomes of most of them. Some are in the hands of others, some just rely on the winds. But like today, all I can do is my part. No matter what happens outside, I know what I can do, and as long as I do my best. I'll find my way home.

The Gap Week.

I'm in an extremely quiet office today. Everyone is still out with their families and friends, and won't be back until a new year rings, and everyone pushes the restart button on their lives. New goals, new resolutions, a can-do attitude that gets crippled in the winter. If New Year's was still in April, I think a lot more resolutions would get done.

I'm crap with resolutions. I'm crap with saying 'I'm going to do this!' and make it happen. I'll shut down. I don't know the how or why of it, but the more I tell, the less likely it becomes. In a normal circumstance, I would learn to just shut up. But I'm also not very good at that.

What -does- work is putting myself in a position where I can't -not- do what I've promised. That I back myself into a corner so tight that the only thing to do is succeed. And in 2011, there's more than a few things going on.

The first is working with my boyfriend to get him settled in Chicago. That's a big challenge and a bigger stressor. There's a lot of concerns and challenges, and I'm focusing on the material problems, rather than addressing the emotional ones. Over the year, I need to address all of them. I love him to pieces, and would a love a life with him.

The second, is Optimist Theatre's Will-ness program. I pledged to drop 75lbs over the next year, doing everything 'right': Diet, exercise, mental wellness. In return, I have a handful of sponsors pledging money on a per-pound basis. This breaks with some older mental health plans I had, but screw it. I love the Optimists and believe in what they do. More importantly, though, I'd really just like to look dashing at least once before I'm 40.

The third is more challenging, and I'm forcing myself into a corner right now by posting it. Before my birthday in May. I'll be producing an urban fantasy podcast. It will feature submitted original fiction, and will pay. It won't be a pro-paying market, but it will pay. It will also cover some media criticism, and literature reviews. Sometime in the next few days, I'll be posting the rules here as well.

There's smaller goals. Cons, Costumes, my own writing, GRE's, certification classes, but those are the big three. And they all go live on Saturday.

Which is why I'm glad there's a gap week.

The holiday is done. There were people, there were gifts. I put effort into making strangers feel welcome, and tried not to feel alone. But yesterday, the year had ended. There was nothing left for me to do. I got my degree. I got divorced. I've been to see family and friends, and they've come to see me. I've run tours, I've worked with theatre companies, and I've been live on a podcast. But there's still a week left. A week where I can look back and see what I've done; where I can plan for what's to come.

And breathe.

I simply must learn to breathe.

When in doubt, go back to what worked.

Eleven years ago, I became close friends with someone through fanfic. I wasn't a big follower of fanfic, and the stuff I wrote almost immediately found a new place to be, but it started 11 years of friendship, and the beginning of my writing path.

For both the friendship and the writing, things have been hard. For my friend, the differences seem to outweigh the commonalities, and it's harder still, now that my life is changing paths again. Writing is a pain, with piles of pages full of opening sentences, and the phrase written again and again when I get stuck: Maybe this isn't the story you want to tell. It's been painful. In both cases, I felt like it was time to give up.

Two weeks ago, I introduced my friend to a story-based web game that had all of the things we tend to like. As we hung out, we'd play the game over our smartphones. But when our visit ended, so did the play. Today, I happened to need him for some items in the game, and rather than just posting a request, I sent him a letter in the style of the game. To which he responded in kind with even more flair. The back and forth has begun.

I have to allow myself to use earlier tools, no matter how immature. If the goal is to get me writing, then the smaller, sillier tools have a use, and as I develop, I can go back to the tools that served me before school. And in reading my friend's missives, it's good to have that relationship rebuilding as well.

Trusting what's inside

I'm a big believer in dreams.

Not as astral journeys, or gateways into higher consciousness. Just as the sheer processing and cleanup of information that surrounds me. I love the idea that everything I take in within a day in data, sensory information, and emotional experience can be reviewed, sorted, edited, and incorporated into my personal narrative...While the personal narrative that is my 'self' experiences it.

I look forward to dreams when I'm in new environments, or when I've had a day where the sensory overload goes beyond my ability to process. The dreams try to put all that information in context, and in that process, arrangements that are at the same time false (as in, the connections have nothing to do with each other) and awesome (as in tripping awesome).

In crisis points in my life, the same thing happens. For decades, it was a recurring dream. However, two months ago, the factors that made the recurring dream 'true' were eliminated. I could no longer dream of going back to school...I had gone, and triumphed. This week, though, I discovered that finishing school wasn't enough for my psyche, and I was hammering day after day, despairing of figuring out what to do with my life in the limited time I have left. Most of my friends are well on their way, with multiple successes and failures under their belt, moving on to paths I can barely fathom.

The misery I've felt over having done so little reached an apex last night, and I didn't want to go to bed. But exhaustion prevailed, and I was able to sleep in a position that allowed for deep dreaming.

And as a good dream does (whether fun or frightening), it attempted to contextualize everything, and came up with a narrative that was both wrong and awesome.

I get who my imagined 'players' are in my failure fantasy. I get where I see myself. I get why my comparisons to others are wrong. But at the same time...what a kickass narrative. I got to watch a great story, and until my body forced me awake (from moving into the -wrong- position), participate in it. I know where to go.

On a related note, I love my phone. Aside from it now being my alarm clock, the app 'Evernote' for immediate note-and-tag writing is fantastic. Best dream journal ever.

When volunteering for something feels like a vacation, the organizer is doing something right.

My big sister ran a tour of the haunted locales in a sleepy port town in wisconsin. My best friend and I went on the tour on Friday, hung out with the junior tour guides on saturday afternoon, and spent the evening keeping the candles lit in the cemetery for the final leg of the tour. My friend and I turned it into a picnic. A picnic amongst the dead in the middle of the night.

Taking the time to talk about time.

Time hit me twice yesterday.

The first in that I let my old triggers and fears hurt a friend. And in so doing, ended that friendship. At the moment, I have to believe that's permanent. I have to accept my mistake and move on. The problem was that he wasn't that person from the past, and in analysis, that person I perceived, probably wasn't the person he was.

From that pain, I had to see an aunt who was in town. I haven't seen her in seven years, and even than, only in the context of her family, which is crazy in the way that novels are written about. In the case of the older generation of the family, some already have been. When I was a child, we'd visit this aunt regularly, and in the context of her relationship with an abusive and violent husband, long divorced. My youth up to the age of 14, is piled of memories of fear and hostility for that world.

What I find instead is a dotty, not-unlike-my-mom professional woman on the cusp of retirement. She's funny, warm, and full of stories. We wander downtown, drink at the Walnut Room, have dinner at the Atwood (fulfilling at least 2 of my Burnham fantasies outright), and the hang out and talk. Just a happy, wonderful time.

This is not unlike the previous post. The universe isn't about me. So much more is going on. And because all that is going on, the people around me are in a constant state of change. I can't look at the selves 5, 10, or even 20 years ago and say that's who those people are. Because not only is it not true, I was perceiving them as the person I was back then as well, and I hope that I am different.