FUCK YEAH! I'm fired up and I haven't even fired up the tea kettle yet.
Actually I never really left according to some of my Felliniesque beliefs. The whole "no beginning, no end ..." which bears repeating like a fucking mantra:
There is no beginning, there is no end; there is only the infinite passion of life.
There is no beginning, there is no end; there is only the infinite passion of life.
There is no beginning, there is no end; there is only the infinite passion of life.
There is no beginning, there is no end; there is only the infinite passion of life.
There is no beginning, there is no end; there is only the infinite passion of life.
There is no beginning, there is no end; there is only the infinite passion of life.
There is no beginning, there is no end; there is only the infinite passion of life.
I've been doing research. Recharging. A sabbatical.
One of the things I realize I'm very guilty of is not being clear. I evade exposition for fear of being a bore. There are other reasons like racebrain, intellectual arrogance/inferiority (which really just an elaboration of the fear diagnosis) and general impatience, but in the end I end up confusing most of the people in my life and feeling defensive about not communicating what I intended. And let's face it, all this jumbled jim-jam confuses the hell out of me, too.
So to be clear - I am back in the sense that I am formally resuming my practice of work as a storyteller. I've no new film projects in mind nor do I intend to resume making films. Actually I do intend to resume making films. I already have. I'm working on Dangerous Writing again, cutting a trailer and making music for it. And I've booked a couple of jobs to produce some mental health training videos.
I realize my attitude toward that is all jacked up. I'm looking at it as a check in the bank account and nothing more, when the fact is I really like the woman doing the presentations and I find the topics interesting. It's really going to help her career and possibly many others. And it's going to provide work for me and a couple of friends. Truth is, just as I want to avoid exposition - which is to say the appearance of making an effort to communicate - I want to avoid the giving the perception that I am making an effort to make money.
Wow.
Okay before I bum myself and start listening to my inner critic (however accurate he may be) I want to get back to the topic of the day - lust for life. Falling in love. One of the things I've accomplished in the past year is finding, buying and renovating a home. It's a perfect structure for our lives. I'll post some pics soon.
Jumping around a bit again. Again? All I've done is jump around. So in short I was working on this New Orleans project in the fall of oo8 and it felt like maybe I could take a giant step forward in my career so I wanted to get in better physical shape both to increase my fitness and to present myself to the world better. So I started a fitness regimen for the umpteenth time and soon realized I had to do something different were I to have any chance at succeeding. Then there was a snow storm and my kids were home everyday and the combination of relating to myself physically and being with my kids so much opened my eyes to some significant realities that I had been avoiding. As I gave myself over to those truths it consumed my energy and interest to the point that I lost interest in pursuing telling stories. I formally said goodbye to this blog eventually. I got pretty involved in lots of physical activities and then went back to school to begin preparing for a career in public health. I took a term off to remodel the new house during which I was very resourceful and design conscious in ways that I hadn't been in some time. It was suggested to me to pursue a career in interior design by some of the contractors working on the remodel. (I appreciated the compliments, but don't find that path interesting.) I continued doing yoga and strength training and working with personal training clients almost all the way through. The last six weeks of the job I was working seven days a week and that seemed to be more than enough activity, so I backed off from some of my fitness commitments. We spent a lot of money on the new house, and while I was happy with the results it was becoming clear to me that I was going to need to start making some money to contribute to the family budget. Going back to school became both less tenable and less interesting. I resolved not to make any decisions until I was finished with the house, because I knew the stress and fatigue were wearing me down considerably.
Nicola had a two-week job in San Francisco and the kids and I drove down for a weekend visit. That drive has always been an interesting window onto myself. And being in downtown SF where I lived when I first moved to the city in 1989 was a good experience on many levels. In short I decided not to worry about school or my waning interest in pursuing a public health career or getting a job. I elected to simply do what was in front of me. Finish Dangerous Writing. Finish settling into the new house. Get back into a routine of meditation and movement. Help my family adjust to our new home and neighborhood while my wife has been out of town for three of the past four weeks. Cook, clean, shop for groceries. And to explore the possibilities of writing prose in a more directed but less ambitious manner.
So that's what I've been up to the past couple of weeks. I don't have it all figured out. But I'm happy to be working on DW again. I happy but a little afraid of the new stories I'm working on with an editor/teacher.
I was on Facebook yesterday and the long tail of the past led me to the blog of a woman I knew in passing many years ago. She looks really happy. I could tell she was in love with life by the way she documented the things in her life. I was inspired.
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