in my solitude

For some reason on Friday night I felt moved to scan pictures from the old family albums that I hijacked from my dad's house last time I visited. This one caught my attention, because it pretty much represents my childhood. As an only child, I was my own playmate. At the beach, I invented a game called “big-a-bye” which involved moving sand from one location to another and saying “big-a-bye”. I could play it all by myself. (Although, sometimes Dad would join in.)

In a way, it looks kind of sad, to see this little girl sitting alone in the sand. And that's probably the reason why I feel so grateful for the wonderful friendships I have now.

But I don't view the loneliness of my childhood as a bad thing. I got to know myself so well, I did so much searching of my own mind and soul, so much contemplation, even as young as in this photo. I would lie awake at night for hours, envisioning my future, figuring out what I wanted out of life. Solitude came to be something that I was never afraid of; rather in solitude, I found solace.

I don't often seek to spend time alone anymore. I have gotten into the habit of wanting to be around people more often than being by myself. But I suspect this is largely because my alone time has become less contemplative, more practical, more of a time to “get things done.” This picture reminds me how enjoyable it can be to just ponder in private the silent wonder of the world.

goals for 2006

Having been off school for the last couple weeks, I've had lots of time on my hands. For the most part, I've been very unproductive, treating the vacation time as a vacation. I've felt guilty for that a lot of the time, but when I look back on how much I've accomplished in this past year, how much has changed and how hard I've worked, it's put me a little more at peace with taking some time off.

I've also spent some time looking at what I want to accomplish over the next year. From most years in the past, I'm used to having a great deal of personal overhaul kinds of goals, big financial hurdles to jump, and finding major direction in life.

But I've learned in this life of transitions I'm living that, as a student, it doesn't make sense to expect to have a lot of time and energy on your hands other than for classes, because frankly, school itself meets a lot of those big directional goals. Just being in school is in itself one of my biggest long term goals, and is a step in accomplishing many of the others. And I can't really move on to more, especially financially or career-wise, until school is over.

Do you realize how freeing that is? That basically leaves all my non-school related efforts to taking care of myself physically and emotionally, since my intellectual needs are being met, and college life also keeps me socially active. Everything else just needs to be maintained.

So, most of my goals this year have ended up being creative ones. Listed here are not all the specifics, but some general outline for what things I hope to improve this year. For the ones that are not entirely self-explanatory, I will elaborate on them in coming entries.

Creative:

• i will write three poems per week

• i will draw/paint/create three things per week

• i will begin playing out regularly again... return to the singer/songwriter life and become part of Columbus' music scene

• i will continue piano lessons and begin guitar lessons, practicing daily

• i will create themed topics of thought and exploration for myself on a regular basis, as writing prompts and artistic themes, keeping track of these in my small moleskine

• i will participate in the bi-weekly photography challenge with Adam

• i will update my blog at least twice a week

• i will create at least four audio docs, one of at least 40 minutes

• i will contribute more to my themed photo collections

Personal/Home/Financial:

• i will get an apartment i like/permanent housing (in time for summer vacation)
  

• i will manage my study time/recreation time better and plan out school days

• i will figure out a way to earn a stable living until graduation

• i will figure out a way to earn a stable living (and pay off student loans quickly) after graduation

• i will establish a ritual to help me wake up better/easier in the mornings

• i will begin regularly putting money in my savings account

• i will get my computer fixed

• i will get some old but sturdy suitcases for storage

• i will not buy anything i don't absolutely need or absolutely love
  

• i will travel to someplace I've never been before, out of state

Physical:

• i will take a daily multivitamin

• i will start running again

ripple effect

Before coming to school, I had held numerous jobs over the years. My favorite, and the one I held seasonally for about five years, was as office assistant for a self-employed mime and juggler turned motivational lecturer.

(I will pause here for a moment here so everyone can get all the mime jokes out of their system. “Did he talk when he was in the office?” “Did you have to let him out of the glass box?” “Were his lectures pantomimed?” etc. etc. Ready to move on now?)

Curtis was a mime and juggler for 25 years before making the transition to lecturing, but is was a natural transition considering how goal-oriented he was, and how motivating he was to be around.

When I was growing up, every year my dad always would make a list of “new years resolutions” on new years day. He'd write his list of resolutions on the back side of a used envelope. They were things like “read more” or “exercise regularly” and other such typical types of goals. He knew as well as I did that this ritual was to make himself feel better for the day, but was pretty much forgotten by the next week if not sooner.

That was what the idea of “setting goals” represented to me. A nice ritual to fool yourself in to believing you'll accomplish more than you actually will.

Until working for Curtis.

When he and his wife Michelle would sit down and set goals, it wasn't just on new years day. They would do this monthly, regularly. This entrepreneurial couple didn't just set goals like “read more” but they would establish what it would take to achieve that goal, such as “read at least one book per month”. They would measure their progress on each goal throughout the year. They would plan each week, even each day, keeping in mind what their long term goals were.

I had never seen anything like this. Self-discipline, planning, follow-through. These were principles that I had been told were important my whole life, they sounded so cliché to me, but never had I seen them in action. Never had I had an example of this behavior, carried out so effectively.

Without Curtis and Michelle's influence, I don't think I'd be in school right now. I don't think I'd have had the follow-through or the courage to apply for college, I don't think I'd have gotten out of debt after getting divorced (of course, I'm back in debt now, thanks to student loans, but that's all part of the plan...), I don't think I'd have had the strength to get through a divorce and face all my fears about what people would think of me and how to accept a new idea of the future. I don't think I would have found this new life that I find so very fulfilling and exciting and satisfying. I wouldn't have the wonderful friendships I've found, or all the amazing experiences and adventures I've had in the past three years.

8 days of birthday bliss

To understand the full value of this, let me explain what normally happens when you have a birthday on new years eve.

New years is that holiday that always gets forgotten until after christmas is over. Having a birthday on an often overlooked holiday makes the birthday doubly easy to overlook, because you've only barely thought of the holiday and aren't about to go remembering that someone's birthday is that same day. The last time I can remember a friend calling me on my birthday was in high school... from a friend who had the same birthday. (Remember, high school for me was over in 1998.) I say this not to throw myself a pity party, but to demonstrate just how fantastic this birthday was.

To start with, Adam started giving me birthday gifts even before christmas. The man spoiled me with 8 days of birthday gifts. 8 days, folks. Then on thursday, two days before my birthday, the two of us were in the basement watching his new dvd's of “The West Wing” and Summer, Adam's housemate (and mine too, when I live with them during school vacations) and an amazing dessert chef whose birthday is also on new years eve, came down to interrupt... with an enormous and delicious chocolate chip birthday cookie. (I've never much liked birthday cake; understand that this cookie was the perfect dessert for me.) It was bigger than a pizza, and fresh out of the oven.

Then, when the birthday actually arrived, we went out for breakfast to a favorite french cafe with my dad, his girlfriend, and my sister (the latter two, for future reference, will be referred to as "the Audreys" as they are both named Audrey). After they left, I ripped into the grand finale of gifts from Adam, and we got dressed up to go downtown for drinks and appetizers at Martini's, a fantastic restaurant in the short north.

We rang in the new year at home with James and Summer, playing catch-phrase. Perhaps the best part of the whole day, though, was the number of calls and messages I got that evening from friends wishing me a happy birthday and new year. I have a tendency to get rather depressed around midnight, realizing another birthday has passed, another year gone by. Feelings of nostalgia and loneliness sneak up on me. But this year, I didn't have so much as a twinge of depression. I did come close to getting choked up hearing Dick Clark's impeded speech from his apparently having suffered a stroke, but that was mostly because it was inspiring.

Complete birthday bliss was what the whole thing was.

So far, I like being 26.