This is Cool

Not just this page, (I tell my mom that all the time) but the whole project is lots of fun and, dare I say it, accurate. I think I could do this new math.

Other Lives

Today has been an epic day. I had to stack hundreds, perhaps even thousands of brochures into cupboards. As a result, I have two significant paper cuts on my hands. They are so significant, in fact, that I have to call them paper wounds. But that, as I am sure you will be relieved to discover, is not what I want to talk about today.

Blogs are my hobby, or at least one of them. By which I mean, not just writing, but reading blogs. Lots of blogs. I have lots of spare time at work with affords me with unholy amounts of free time to spend in the world of blogging. As such, the collection of blogs I check in on regularly has grown considerably. Blogs of artists, mothers, authors, chefs, photographers, florists, decorators, pastry chefs. Awesome people that I would know absolutely nothing about except for the fact that they are posting their thoughts/pictures/recipes on the world wide web. And it's awesome. Inspiring even.

I think many commentators on some of the phenomena we've seen with the rise of the webnet point out the drawbacks of "online communities." People get a sense of intimacy with people they know in a strictly digital capacity and lose touch with or fail to form real life relationships. Maybe I'm being oblivious, but I really don't see that being a problem for me, probably because I am not extroverted enough to start discussions. I feel like blogs are a lot more like reading people's memoirs for me than making invisible friends. I clearly differentiate the difference between online and actual relationships. I don't have a sense that any of these bloggers are my friends, in fact all of my friends are very much people in my day to day, real live, walking around life. So, I think I have escaped that peril.

But there is another trap I think I may have slipped into that nobody had the foresight to warn me about. Blog envy. Not just envy of another person's online self-expression space (although some of them are freakin' cool) but a kind of envy of the sort of life that is expressed in those words and pictures. After a long stint in front of the computer, it can be tempting to sigh over the fact that I'm not a watercolorist living in Cape Cod, a florist in Manhattan, or a French expat pastry chef with years of restaurant experience under my belt. These people are cool! I want to be cool too.

I understand and try to avoid the dangers of vicarious living, but I think there is one considerable benefit in all this. I think at this stage in my life, I am continually embroiled in the crisis of deciding who I want to be and I think exploring the options of possible future selves could someday resolve that conflict. And this medium could be exceptionally helpful since one is always discovering new kinds of people in the blogging world and, since I'm not wholly sold out to any of the options I actually have before me, maybe my true calling is out there, still waiting to be uncovered. Only a blog away...

Strawberry Cure

Today was a really awful day. Anxious and depressed, partially for no good reason, partially because today I feel fairly certain that my entire future is mere inches away from going down in flames. So I came home and am making a strawberry-raspberry galette. It's for bible study tomorrow, but just making it kind of makes me feel better.

I want to be Real...

photo credit: Debra Trean

I have been thinking quite a bit lately about what it is that I want to do with my life. This is chiefly because my current position is about to end at the end of June and I am trying to work out where it is that I'm going to work next. The issue is, whenever you're making decisions about what it is you want to do, I think especially at this time in one's life, you're also making decisions about who you are and who you want to be. You're not just taking a job (ideally), you're advancing towards some ambiguous thing called a career.

Well, I think what I've realized about who I am and where I want to go in my career is that, more than anything else in the world, I love dancing. I want to be around dance for my entire life. I think it is far too late to consider a career in a professional dance company, but I want to be around dance and dancers and in the dance world, basically forever. I don't know what I want to do in the world, largely because I don't even know all the kinds of things that I could be doing, but that is where I want to be.

The big issue with this is that I feel unqualified. I have been dancing my entire life, but I've only taken a few actual dance classes. At this point in my life I dance at least three times a week, sometimes four if I am assistant teaching a tango class. But it never seems like enough to make up for a lack of on paper qualifications or feedback from knowledgeable peers. Which leaves me constantly wondering: Am I a Real Dancer?

Now don't, for heaven's sake try to pin me down on what exactly a Real Dancer is. I'm sure I have no idea. The closest I could come to describing what I encompass in the term is to say that if I was esteemed and treated as a dancer by other, accomplished dancers, I think I could consider myself a Real Dancer. The trouble is, I don't really know any accomplished dancers. Although the exact definition of "accomplished dancer" is also a little fuzzy. I mean, do I have to get props from Martha Graham before this would be a done deal? Would even that kind of validation be enough?

The root trouble is, I think what I really need is not so much affirmation from Martha Graham so much as some affirmation from myself. But I have always struggled to be internally validated about anything. Even my writing, in which I have earned a freakin' Bachelor's degreee, by the by, but I just don't seem to have enough...I don't know, moxy is a fuzzy enough term, to consider myself a Real Writer either. I don't know where the obsession comes from, to find some mystic guru to descend and tell me which side of the arbitrarily drawn line I fall on, but I guess it all has to do with identity again. What I do is a very large part of who I am. And I am a person who has many interests, but few passions. If I can't achieve some level of proficiency in those passions, why bother with the pursuit?

But that's it--the pursuit! If I pursue writing, if I pursue dancing, doesn't that defacto make me a writer and a dancer? I mean, if a person dances three times a week, I don't think it would make very much sense to say that they're not a dancer, right? I don't know about the warm and fuzzy shelf life of this little epiphany, but for a moment it comforts me a great deal to know that I can be a Real Pursuer. Whether that makes me a writer and a dancer, or a Writer and a Dancer, I don't know, but hopefully it will at least afford me some real peace of mind.

S.

P.S.--But, as an aside, if anyone offered me Martha Graham's phone number, I wouldn't turn it down...

The Black Thumb

photo credit: weeder's digest

Okay, I know we're already deep into May with nary a peep from me and I am failing to live up to my two posts a week in the most miserable fashion, and I owe you a long, thoughtful post that I don't yet even have the inspiration for, let alone time to put together...but tonight will not be the night for that. I have bad news

My ranunculus is dying.

I think it caught something called powdery mildew. It started getting this white powder all over its leaves and then all the leaves turned brown and fell off. It is hard to explain how very sad I am about this. I loved that plant. It was beautiful. And it makes me sad because I feel like so many plants that I've owned since coming to Buffalo have died. Do I have a black thumb? I am starting to be afraid that this is the case...

RIP Ranunclus. I really felt like what we had was magical, if short-lived.

S.