Working Towards the Holidays

We are well and truly in the thick of the holiday season now, and I'm reminded more than ever how little my life conforms to a common schedule.

I've been working harder and better than ever over the past few days. It feels as if the Thanksgiving holiday was a giant slingshot of focus and energy that has launched me on the warpath towards Christmas.

Previously in life I always looked forward to the holidays as a time to relax, to take whole days without working and feel just fine about it. I would usually come home with project that I "really need to work on", and I'd go back to school with them too. I think maybe that was part of the fun.

But this Thanksgiving was very different. As fun as it was, the days off quickly started feeling like an imposition rather than a blessing. I enjoyed them tremendously, but by about monday I was VERY eager to just get back to work, and I have been every since. I feel the approach of Christmas as a sort of ticking clock, counting down to the days when I'll need to set work aside again.

In reading this, I realize that it might sound like cause for concern. Don't worry, I'm not becoming a crazy work-a-holic that can't enjoy holiday times with friends and family. I'm just not looking for as many excuses to avoid working as I used to, which is a very good thing. I'm waking up in the morning excited about what I'm going to tackle during the day. It feels like a very good place to be, and I'm deeply anticipating the satisfaction of having some completed projects to show for it in a month or two.

Keep an ear to ground folks, I've got some things a-brewing :)

Halloween in the City

Halloween has never been a very big holiday for me. Even as a kid I never had a particularly strong desire to join in. I'm not really the "fill my pillowcase with candy and eat it by tomorrow" type, so a huge part of the allure goes out right there.

But! This year I decided to actually go out for Halloween. Found a great cabbie hat to complete my Newsie costume, and a few of us ventured into the city. I really didn't know what to expect. I'd heard some wild stories of craziness, reveling, crowded streets and scandalous costumes. As we stepped out of the metro station in U st. however we found only the mildest versions of those things (although there were definitely some scandalous costumes running around. Does it count as a costume if it does not incorporate fabric?).

We picked a direction and wandered towards it, and fairly quickly Dave's musically attuned ears picked up the sound of live music. We stepped into a bar/restaurant with a live trio playing jazz, R&B, and jazzy covers of 90s pop classics, and we ended up staying for the whole evening. The friends were wonderful, the music was awesome, and I had a heaping plate of Spaghetti and a beer.

Now that is my kind of Halloween.

NaNoWriMo

Holy crap I must be insane, but I'm actually going to do this: www.nanowrimo.com

30 days + 50k words + maintaining work and social life = very little sleep in November, I imagine. But that's great, cause I've never really liked November much anyway, so this gives me something to look forward to.

Thankfully, I already have a book well outlined. I guess it would technically be cheating to count the handful of pages I've already written, but I can just compensate for that by not adding those words to my word count total or something.

So, T-2 days and counting! I'll start stretching out my fingers...

I will

I've recently been re-discovering my love of declarative sentences.

"I might", "I may", "I want to", and "perhaps" have become increasingly unsatisfying of late. I've been working to replace with a simple "I will" or "I won't".

I will push myself into new and uncomfortable settings, even when I'm feeling tired.

I will blog more often, with less self-editing.

I will be clear about what I need to do for work, and move projects forward strategically each day.

I won't obsess about what I can't control.

I won't allow momentary failures or disappointments to scare me away from trying again tomorrow.

Even simpler things like saying "I will take some time off now" or, "I will follow up with that person" have been an incredible relief. Try it! It can become rather addicting.

It's encouraging to feel like I can choose and then act accordingly, no matter what circumstances are being thrown at me. It's also a bit terrifying at times. I feel exposed and defenseless when I commit to an idea, passion, or pursuit. I don't always meet my commitments, at which point I have to say "I won't wallow in guilt. I will re-adjust and try again."

I guess I'd rather be terrified and fulfilled than comfortable and constrained.

Cumulus

Has anyone listened to Imogen's single Cumulus? It's a lovely instrumental track, and even without words it is the perfect summary of my life these days.

It has a bit of a questing, searching undertone, but it's very calm. It has drive, but not the kind you see right away. It's beautiful, but not the standard kind of beautiful. It's very complex, but it's built out of simple things. And it seems to go on forever.

That's all I really feel like saying at the moment. Maybe starting to post again will draw more out of me soon.

Reading, or the Lack Thereof

A very good friend recently drew my attention to the fact that I haven't been reading as much over the year as I had in the past. It was one of those "true facts" that take you a little by surprise when you notice them, and I started wondering why that is.

A huge reason that I've identified so far is that I get more deeply and easily annoyed by poor writing now that I understand the craft better. I've realized that it's probably good to be a little selective about what you develop expertise in. I'm not arguing that "ignorance is bliss", so much as realizing that there is value in being able to appreciate something on a very simple level. Once you begin to really learn all of its ins, outs, ups, downs, dos, don'ts, and details, it can be difficult to just sit back and enjoy it without analyzing and critiquing.

On the flip side, though, I've noticed that I now appreciate truly excellent writing so much more than I used to. Recently I was reading one of the early chapters of a new book. The author introduced an important new character with one sentence: "Charley Feavy was a short man with dark hair and perpetually dirty fingernails." That one sentence gave me such a clear, visceral picture of this character and his personality/behavior/role in the story that it really was all he needed to say. I spent 5 or 10 minutes just reading it and appreciating all of the craft and editing that most likely went into writing that one perfect description. Those small moments of deeper awareness and appreciation more than balance out all of the crap books that I put down and never pick up again these days.

Thunderstorms

There has been a thunderstorm churning outside since yesterday afternoon. Lightning keeps sparking in the distance, and you can feel the energy on your skin. Seems like the weather outside has caught up with my own atmosphere of late.

Everything has felt pressed together and rumbly lately, as if something is building, and all I can do is watch it build and wonder what is going on.

I can't exactly explain what I'm talking about, it's really just a feeling, but it's gotten intense enough to become distracting at times. Most of my life, from business to where I'm living to relationships and everything in between, is all potential energy just hanging around in the air, and it's been making me nervous.

I think I'm due for my own thunderstorm sometime soon, and I have no idea what my landscape will look like when the wind sets everything back down again.

It's been way too long, but I've been feeling blog-stuck, so here's a short little piece I wrote recently, just to get things moving again:


Fire is the Song. It is the leaping flower. It is rage, love, and hope, all of the things that smolder in the heart and fill the eyes. It is the wild, calling from the top of a mountain, the first flash of the dawn star. Sing, and the fire will come.

Water is the Dream. It is the sweeping fields awaiting harvest, the taste of the future on your tongue. It is the now and never-to-be. It is the un-graspable. It is deep breathing in a dark room. It is the midnight silver on the needles of fir trees. Dream, and the water will come.

Earth is the Memory. It is the thick-bowled oak tree. It is the endless turning, the never-changing, the deep rooted. It is the stillness before a question. It is the cool clay banks that guide the river. It is the all-swallowing roar of sudden anger, the grinding of boulders, the crashing of ancient trees. Remember, and the earth will come.

Wind is the Dance. It is the soaring, swift-winged kite hawk. It is the hidden whisper and the sudden shout, the brilliant flash of lightning that strikes and is gone. It is the great-pushing, the up-lifting, the rain-bringing. It is the quick smile and the swift embrace. Dance, and the wind will come.

Things I am Learning about Living in the City

1. Everything in Alexandria closes at 10pm on Mondays. If you should happen to have run out of cream for your coffee, or want some milk for cereal, you are shit-outta-luck, fella. I know it may seem like you should be able to just walk down the street and buy some, now that you live in a city, but this is a vicious lie. Even if you walk 10 blocks to the end of King street, you will not find a single restaurant, bar, or deli that is still open, so don't even bother.

2. Simply being in the city makes you more productive. You will find yourself working at odd hours, when just a week ago you had trouble getting yourself to work for an hour. You will spontaneously think of great ideas, and then actually sit down to work on them instead of putting them off for weeks until you can't really remember what you got so excited about in the first place.

3. Just being in the city will not automatically make all of your dreams come true. You will still feel lonely sometimes. You will occasionally wonder when life will move forward. But unlike living in the country, where you have endless silent hours to try not too think such thoughts, in the city you will quickly find something else interesting to capture your attention. Feelings of loneliness, frustration, or confusion will move from close to overwhelming to merely visible in the background. After all, there's that new coffee shop you haven't visited yet, and you really wanted to go spend a few hours in the bookstore this afternoon...

DC bound

So much has happened in the past few weeks that I've been putting off blogging about it because I haven't really known where to begin. But I know better than that :). So, I'm going to break things down a bit and get caught up in smaller updates rather than one epic one. Today's is about moving to DC:

As some of you know, but some of you may not, I moved into a townhouse in Alexandria last week, and I've been loving every minute of city life so far. The owners of the house are friends of my parents, who spend every summer with their extended family in France, so we're house sitting for them until some time in August. Which works out to several months of rent free living in DC :).

The area itself is really cool. We're about 3 blocks from King Street, the main drag in this area, which is full of great restaurants, little shops, a book store and movie theater, etc. After a long walk with mom and dad a few days ago I discovered that there's even a cool kind of harbor/park area on the Chesapeake at the end of King Street. I'm sure I'll be spending more time there over the summer once the weather warms up.

I've never really lived in a walking district like this before, but it turns out that I absolutely love it. I've started going out for strolls to get coffee and wander around, just to be on the sidewalk with other people. I've also started taking my laptop to work at the Cosi down the street instead of staying in the house like I usually do. It's amazing how hungry I've been for this kind of thing.

I haven't really begun connecting with people yet, or exploring some of the activities that I want to do while I'm here. I'm treating it like a hot tub, easing my way in and enjoying every minute of it. It will be interesting to see how things change once I'm spending more time with friends here.

So that's my DC snippet. Here are some King street pics I took to give you a feel for the area. I'll write about some other recent life developments soon.