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Archives For January 2013

A Foggy Morning in Kendall County

January 28, 2013 — Leave a comment

“Do you know what you’re going to do now?” his mother asked.

    “See the world,” said Bod. “Get into trouble. Get out of trouble again. Visit jungles and volcanoes and deserts and islands. And people. I want to meet an awful lot of people.”

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Turning my back on the safe and familiar, and I’m off to wander for a few weeks. Got a free place to stay down in South Carolina, so I’m going to write and go for walks on the beach in the Old South and wake up in strange new cities.

Treading that line between self-exploration and self-indulgence. I’m not done with this whole Leave Year thing, even though I’m back from Dublin. And if I could afford to be back there, I’d go back in a heartbeat. But a free house in a place called Murrells Inlet ain’t half bad. I expect there will be oysters.

While I’ve been home, I’ve worked at the area schools for a few days, filling in for absent teachers. It’s fine, but not very interesting, creatively. I’ve also traveled a bit. Just got back from Washington D.C., and there will be more on that soon.

I got my final grades back for my semester in Dublin. Did fine in all my courses, but I got an A in my Writing for the Stage course, and that meant a great deal to me. I’m in a good place, writing-wise, at the moment, and every day I spend back home amongst the safe and familiar I find my creative energies slowly draining out of me. Had a job offer to do some part-time tech theatre work, but I’m going to put that off for a bit, if I can. This is the true once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: to explore and be creative without any responsibilities. Need to see where it goes, and enjoy it while it lasts. The safe and practical will always be there waiting for me.

For now, check the sidebars of this site for the Twitter updates, and I shall be in touch soon.

In Teaching, Theatre, Travel
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Closed for Winter Season

January 14, 2013 — 8 Comments

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In the Caffe Tlazo

I’m currently in northern Wisconsin, driving around and trying to put off the inevitable.

My aunt and uncle rented a place up in Door County for a week and invited me to come up and stay for a few days. Another couple of aunts and and uncle are up here as well. They are all (mostly) retired, and so Door County in January is the type of thing they do, because hey, why not? You can go where you want, when you want when you’re retired, as long as you’ve got a decent pension coming in each month.

I am not retired. I was a teacher, and more recently I was a student. Sometimes I’m a director, or a playwright. Right now…I’m kind of…nothing.

I’m in-between projects, as they say. I could have been substitute teaching today, but to be honest, I’m feeling less and less okay with doing that gig for a time. It just feels like two many steps back, and yeah, I know it’s only temporary, my old job’s waiting for me next fall, along with my house, and that whole other life I used to live. I should just suck it up and take that call in the morning and go make my measly daily salary.

Except there’s that darn road, and the voice in my head that screams you’re supposed to be doing something different this year, remember? This was supposed to be a year, not five months and change.

Change…change…change…man, that word keeps rolling around my head.

When I talk to most people, they seem to be under the impression that I’m good and returned after having my adventure, and that’s that. Welcome back, Brian, and now let’s get back to the way it was. You checked that box, and good for you.

Except I don’t think that’s what this whole thing was about.

While I’ve been waiting to get this subbing thing sorted, I’ve been going for a lot of walks, trying to keep myself in Wandering Shape, getting lost in my head and trying to figure out what I’m going to do next. I’ve got some interesting things (possibly) lined up, but again, there’s that darn road. There’s a lot of ’em out there. And being on the road, or going for long walks in the woods is the only thing that really gets me out of bed right now. I only really feel alive when I’m wandering.

Most of Door County is closed for the winter season. The shops and the restaurants and the quaint little ice cream parlors are all shuttered up as the owners take a rest and do some wandering of their own. The retired relatives sit warm and cozy around a fire and pray for snow and skiing and look out across the blue-grey frozen lake. I’m squinting into the afternoon sun, driving a borrowed car that I have to return, and I suppose I should really try and earn a few bucks this week, but man…all that road going, as someone once said.

If I’m really going to do something different with my life, I’m only going to find it out there somewhere, not in a basement or a borrowed classroom or the same streets I knew from ten, twenty, thirty years ago.

Light’s starting to change in the cafe, and it’s time to get back on the road before the sun gets too low in the sky. I’m not looking at a map or a GPS or my phone for directions. Just heading where my gut tells me.

In Travel , ,
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