strange steps

I realize that I have a bit of a roundabout style... that I realize has affected where I am in life at the moment.

correction: I have a roundabout style of talking and writing. I have a straightforward style of doing, at least when it comes to doing things that I know need to happen and want to happen.

clarification: I think that 'straightforward' is commonly used with the idea that not only does one make something happen in a continuous forward motion, but that one does so quickly. no definition I could find of the word states this latter assumption, so I reject that implication for the use of this blog... and for the rest of my life.

let me explain:

psychology today, by far one of my favorite magazines out there, came out with a cover story about 9 or 10 months ago about people who move continuously forward throughout their lives only to end up in random, unexpected places. specifically for the case of this article, they ended up in random careers. the best example I can remember is the woman who did office work for years only to go back to medical school in her late thirties.

I remember reading that article and thinking, why not?

correction: why not me?

clarification: not two years ago, I wouldn't have dared to think that thought.

I finished college and grad school in my early twenties because I thought it was what I had to do. sure, it's what I wanted to do, but I also didn't want to be that 30-something in class. I despised those people. so I simply had to be the one of median age, then to be the young one (I was the third-youngest MSW grad in ASU's Class of 2005...). it made me feel better about how much I'd already achieved, and like I had a path that I was on...

correction: it made me feel like I was on a path and the people who were older than me weren't.

clarification: I know the day my life when went off-path. 13 august 2005. the day after leadership conference ended, and I decided continue my summer and stay at miniwanca for the fall. that decision was nowhere to be found in the best-laid-plans.

but like I said, not two years ago would I have admitted that was the moment. I knew what came next: job, two years of it. apply to UW in the meantime. get my PhD. teach social work. make things better.

it wasn't until about two years ago, when I was out of work in a field I realized I didn't really like anymore, just before I started this blog, that I realized that my path actually follows me, instead of the other way around.

correction: I still like social work, and did then, though I wouldn't admit it.

clarification: I'm still not convinced that it's being done the way it should be, on both micro or macro levels. I'll work on that... eventually.

my path, which has been the subject of quite a few posts here, is something I found myself thinking about this morning... as I sat on this awful bus ride that took entirely longer than it should have. I reflected on the fact that I am allowing myself to take more chances than I used to, at least in terms of things that I do.

for example: I wouldn't take an art class in college for fear of not being as good as the rest of the class. I took social work because I already knew I was good at it. but I was and still remain as curious and hungry as ever for art - for architecture, for illustration, for jewelrymaking, for design! - and I'm only lately allowing that to come forward.

correction: I was always the artsy one in college, I just thought it more a hidden talent than an outward expression. I started allowing those tendencies to be expressed during a particularly bleak summer, the one after the off-path moment started.

clarification: I am grateful for the off-path moment... or at least, the thought thereof... and for all that has followed.

I think the point is that I have been, whether I thought to acknowledge it earlier than today or not, on a straightforward path my entire life. one that has lead me to this very moment right here... and to the one on the bus this morning that made me want to get on with my life in the way I always pictured... when I was drawing things on paper plates as a kid.

the explanation ends with this: I think the strangest steps, the ones that others might see as roundabout but are actually full of purpose and quite straightforward in nature, are the key to a path most enjoyed.

back to the future

in the last twenty four hours, I've had two different people rightfully accuse me of slacking in life as a whole.

at first it was just a conversation about how I could ever be okay for settling on a life course that's safe. and then it was the mention of an interpersonal holding pattern I've been in for a while.

my response as of right now is: somewhere I confused inflexible and immobile safety with good, solid, rightfully cautious but ever-bold judgment. the latter is something that I am apt to exhibit. the former is something I never saw myself as. and the holding pattern can only be explained by the falling back on safety as an excuse, and allowing that safe feeling to shelter me where I stand.

to be fair, I needed a moment to regroup... to figure out life after I'd completed my best laid plans that trailed off into that 25 year span of "be an adult" (that part's somewhere between "graduate" and "retire" for most people, in case you were wondering.), and to heal after my first few attempts at my "be an adult" plan kind of fizzled. but while I am a firm believer in needing time to slow down and reflect, I know I took it a little too far. I became complacent, and consequently crabby with myself over my complacency, and even crabbier over the fact that I cannot seem to push myself to counteract it.

I'm pretty much through with being on hold in my safe spot, though.

ironically, I'm a person who believes steadily that things happen in patterns of three. usually I'm left wondering what the third sign in the pattern will be, and what the whole pattern will mean. this time, I'm waiting for it... because I can already guess what it will mean. it's almost like I'm waiting for the universe's permission to get on with it. so...

...I guess it's time I realized that the lifelist that started this blog may no longer be in use, but the steady fire within me that lit such a thing into being is still very much alive.

the thousand words

I didn't take a single picture while I was at camp this year. for two weeks of my life, my camera - frantically charged and packed before departing st louis - lived in my purse, on my dresser, in my room, in seay.

my old camp self would have been undeniably upset about this. how else would I remember these people? how else would I document how cute he was or how dirty we got or how silly they could be?!

the most important answer to this question, early-aughts self, is that going to camp with the anxiety of a new position, after a summer off and two years of pushing away, and many years after most of the people with whom I'd formed cliques had stopped coming back was bad enough. I didn't even send in my final confirmation for attending until a month before I was set to go, because I wasn't sure if I could bring myself to face it. but bringing the camera out and reclaiming my space as the photographic soccer mom of the group felt like too much. my kids are staff; my friends are gone. I was ready to fade into the background.

sure, I can make lighter excuses: my memory card is still full of pictures from 2007 (sad truth); my camera still acts up as a result of my photo shoot with lodge and the powerwasher in 2006; I'm too old for pictures; I'll just get them from everyone else once they're posted on facebook; etc.

but in actuality, after I realized that this lack of shuttering was happening, my only answer was that I needed to rely solely on my memory. I surmised that such a thing would allow me to remember the week only as I saw it. if I didn't make a single new friend, only I would know. if I loved every minute of it, only I would know. being absolutely in the present at each moment was the easiest way for me to realize such things. and so I justified it this way: that every second I spent posing for a picture or pressing a button was another second I spent somewhere in the past or the future, instead of in the moment that was happening.

it was very freeing.

***

I used to think that pictures did the work of forming such a memory. until I realized that sometimes pictures make no sense in as little as days after they've been taken, and that my most vivid memories are just outside of the pictures I've taken at those moments:

whole rolls were used in glen arbor on those debaucherous post-conference trips to the lake; one moment of life spent riding directly into the wind and sun on the boat of a guy whose face I'll never remember stays with me more.

unnecessary amounts of money and stress were spent trying to develop pictures after high school football games or dances, just so I could dully relive those moments, but I would rather remember the feeling of safety in glenn's giant old car than shuffle through all of that.

years of playing a game of "what was I doing at this time last week/month/year" in my head always brings me back to being a 16-year-old, dozing on a beach in florida, but you'll never see a picture of that moment.

fry's entire puppyhood is captured and catalogued digitally, though the conversations I had with him while we took two hour walks through a dark, wintry south st louis are so much better.

I could go on...

***

I asked a new friend at one point last week if he could distinctly tell in his head when he was forming a true memory. I meant to ask if he could tell the difference between moments captured on film and moments captured with his whole being. I know I didn't verbalize this question well enough (nor did I ask it at a time conducive to having a solid conversation about it), so it was sort of dropped... but I still wonder: is it just me, or do other people know when they're experiencing a moment they'll remember forever? can they recognize those moments of presence where they live until the next moment, and do they know that everything else - including all of the pictures they can't wait to post in oh-so-many places - is filler? that nothing else matters, save that moment of relief known as right now?

***

I recognize now that most of my anxiety stems from being too positively or negatively attached to moments - often including the pictorial representation thereof - and that I consequently miss out on being fully present in them. ironically, my favorite moment of anxiety is not only one of my favorite moments of presence, but also one that was captured on film by my mom. I was sixteen, sitting on a beach in petoskey, dreading going to camp for the first time.

[picture to be inserted soon enough]

I can remember how it felt to sit on those rocks, in those short shorts, the humidity heavy in the air; the barrage of thoughts I was having about missing another week of summer socializing, about not making any friends, about not fitting in, about not knowing what I was doing or why I was going.

sounds familiar, right?

and while I ended up documenting the hell out of most of my weeks at camp, including that dreaded first one, I survived the first two weeks in august this year without a single shot. I was just there. I was just an observer. I was just taking it all in, and making the present moment happen. that's all I needed. and no picture will ever compare to that.