Itches & Confusions

Several months ago talking to the very wise Erin Elizabeth Gibbs on the phone we talked about all the things we want to do and how hard it is to figure out what we really want to do. Sometimes when some thing or things feel wrong in quotidian life and you are a flaneuse it is easy to jump at any and all possibilities you see. I could be a landscape architect! I could be a graphic designer! I could go back to school! I could work on fishing boats! I could go to Antarctica! I could become fluent in a language and become a translator! I could train to be a chef! I could be an herbalist! I could be a therapist! I could keep doing what I am doing right now! I could get a menial job so I can Work On My Art!

Last night Adam came to potluck and he brought with him two friends visiting from New Orleans. They asked me what I did and I told them and then I asked them what they did and they gazed at the floor and said "nothing cool." And then they told me that they worked in a Creole restaurant. And all I could think was GOD how cool would it be to work in a Creole restaurant, and just run around playing in the city where you live and love.

I mean, I just left that life, the life of customer service and playing in the city where I lived and loved. And I left it because it was eating my soul a little. And I needed to be burning my candle, ever-burning, at a different set of ends.

But this week, the week of four-graves-in-five-nights, when my body is so confused and I see a friend at Orion for five minutes and he says "Saraaaah, that self-care thing," and "you've got some dark circles going, you need to get some sleep," and when I sometimes realize that I haven't had anything to eat for 36 hours and that is why I am so hungry, and when most of the time that the young adults I am working with have not been sleeping they have spent antagonizing each other, or me - this week, I am thinking a lot about all the other things I could be doing, want to do, remembering what it's like to work and play and not carry the weight of your work with you, not constantly be struggling and learning how to best and most healthily carry the weight of your work with you, how to balance it with your life.

But I know, also, that I love what I am doing for right now, and that it is just these two weeks. It's a great lesson in what the ravaging of the body can do to the mind and the soul. And when Sunday hits, I will be entering a peaceful period of 35 and then 20 and then 35 hour weeks, the way I've calculated I need to work to make a comfortable life for myself - and camping trips and trips to Portland and many birthday celebrations for loved ones. And the summer is still here, and shows no signs of turning into autumn, yet. And I have many moments of grace and hilarity and creativity and passion in my day-to-day. And much to be grateful for.