le job, la vie, le vin (misspelled)

As the pace of activity increases, does the pace of innovation/learning/creativity decrease?

I just finished the design of a home page for a website, but it looks a whole lot like another website I designed once, except it has this other element pulled from a different website I designed, combined with another trick, and with maybe one trick I've never done before.

The first web site I made was really bad, but everything was new, so it was completely innovative, I learned a lot, and felt extremely creative. Now that I'm making web stuff more often, I repeat what I know - not quite so innovative, not quite so creative. Yet partly necessary to get things done in a timely manner.

My hope is that I also learn something new with each project I do. Try something new.

If I were to expand on this thought, what if each day was a time to, not only repeat and refine, but try something new?

I would like my professional activity to be a mini-experimentation ground in which to closely examine the stuff of life.

(I've been drinking wine tonight, by myself, sitting in my bed, listening to internet radio and working on this website. Maybe that's sad, but I don't care, I don't care at all, because I like wine, I'm well over the legal drinking age, and now I'm not nearly as anxious about having to buy everyone presents as I was an hour ago.)

as is

Some events.

A camera crew came, set up in the alleyway outside my apartment, and proceeded to film a commercial in my neighbor's garage. For what I don't know.

It rained a lot today, and I went grocery shopping. I bought pumpkin bagels, which I am really excited about. I also bought two salty snack foods and no sugary snack foods. I thought it would be a good step. Then my roommate made chocolate chip cookies and that was the end of the reducing-sugar-intake thought. Gah.

I am currently dealing with several men who are children, and as there are not that many men in my life, it's making me wonder: are all men children? However, as one who has just confessed to losing all resolve to a (lot of) warm fresh-baked cookie(s), perhaps I am not one to talk.

A thought from tonight's shower : sometimes we have to overcome incredible obstacles to get what we want. Othertimes we must give up what we want because the obstacles are too huge. And then there are the times we are too scared to go for what we want and let the obstacles loom like nighttime shadows on the wall.

Gah. Scratch that. Currently, I hate metaphor. Give it to me like it is, Chuck. That's all I can take.

In another world, Chuck does, and says exactly what I've been waiting to hear.

Back in this world, I am preparing for a month of insane grant-writing by trying to get a leg up on it now. I am dancing around old ideas (ones I'd be well over in that other world). Without exaggeration, almost ever single muscle in the left side of my body is tight. There are a good number of dirty dishes in the sink, and I am out of laundry detergent.

San Francisco is the bestest

Of the 12 candidates for mayor, my favorites are:
(original punctuation and capitalization kept. ellipses inserted for omissions)

Grasshopper Alec Kaplan: Vegan Taxicab Driver
"Restore festival, carnival atmosphere; musicians, Artists, fun love. Remember to smile, laugh, celebrate our wonderful existence... Legalize everything. Legalize prostitution... Make everyone happy. No problems, only solutions."

Harold M. Hoogasian: Florist/Coffee Farmer
"The Four Way Test:
First, Is It The TRUTH?
Second, Is It FAIR to ALL SAN FRANCISCANS?
Third, Will It Build GOODWILL and BETTER FRIENDSHIPS?
Fourth, Will It Be BENEFICIAL to SAN FRANCISCO?"

John Rinaldi: Showman
"Hi, my name is Chicken John and I'm running for Mayor... What are my qualifications?... I converted my truck to run on coffee grounds with zero emissions."

Michael Powers: Nightclub Owner
"My creation of the Power Exchange adult sexual liberation experience shows my capacity to embrace every kind of alternative lifestyle and manage multiple environments housed in one totally law-abiding and successful business... I cannot be bought, nor influenced at any price, and will lead by example."

George Davis: Writer/Nudist Activist
"This is a One Issue campaign which is to Make Golden Gate Park Clothing Optional like the major urban parks in Europe. For other policy issues, a well known City Manager will be appointed. Thoughts for today: 1. You are free to be nude!!!"

George Davis is actually my top favorite because he volunteered to usher at Dandelion Dancetheater's latest performance of DROP. He was a very nice and quiet guy, who complied with our request to wear something out of character by wearing pants, a button-up shirt, and an apron with the image of Michelangelo's David. Other than the button pinned to his apron, he didn't mention his candidacy and he folded all the programs quite nicely. Go George. Good luck with your campaign.

graduate school (ramble. read at your own risk.)

I have been lazily looking at graduate schools - and by lazily I mean the super duper American lazy way: I signed up for an e-mail service from the Princeton Review that, about three times a week, sends a list of several programs right to my inbox. I then look through then and say, "Darn it, Princeton Review! I told you I was interested in Liberal Arts and other such useless degrees! I don't WANT an MBA."

Occasionally there are somewhat promising ones. I even requested a brochure from some Monmouth University in New Jersey. I forget what the program was the enticed me... Which is perhaps the problem. I'm not really sure what I'm looking for. Typically, I scan down the list of programs that has just arrived in my inbox and think, "meh." Nothing jumps out. Nothing says, "Yes! This is the program to enrich your life and provide you with the tool necessary to go somewhere interesting with your life."

I moved to San Francisco with the instinctual feeling that it would do just that - give me tools, connections, and a fantastic experience. It has, though not particularly in the way I expected it to. It is still hard. I am still not sure if I can put words to the benefits the entire experience has given me. And I am beginning to see that I will not want to do what I am doing forever, so I need to find pathways to other things. And, because my parents are both highly-educated lovely people who credit their education with their current quality of life, as a beginning to exploring options, I am looking at grad schools. Lazily.

Lazily. I still feel as if I haven't gotten everything out of my experience with SFCD that I've wanted to. I can see that I'll need to leave sometime, but I'm not ready to go yet. So what do I want to get out of this program before I go?

A good friend, someone I grew up with, is currently spending a year in Singapore after graduating from Standford. We have grown closer in recent years, and despite the fact that we are in widely different career areas, are able to discuss the process of finding your path with something profound in common. Perhaps it's because we're both only children of scientists who grew up in Los Alamos. Perhaps we have just the right amount of radiation in our brains.

I digress. If I analyze our recent conversations, it seems that we struggle between two sides of making a life: the results at the end of the line vs. the quality of life during the process.

It's actually simple said like that, but being caught up in it isn't quite so. In considering to grad school or not to grad school: I know I would NOT like having to spend hours reading text-books, taking notes, attending lectures again. But I would enjoy learning. I would enjoy increasing my knowledge and understanding of the world.

(AHA moment: I want my daily practice of dance to be able to increase my knowledge and understanding of the world. Otherwise it is not feeding my complete self. I do, in fact, crave learning, even though I am often lazy about working at it. Note to self: is this what you want before you go? What would I want from the next step in my life? I feel like I may be entering a phase of intense thinking about life. Hoorah.)

les pensees (misspelled)

I was upset today because I didn't want to accept my editor's edits. Some of them were good - tricky work usages, style blah de blahs that I'm a general dunce at catching, better word arrangements, but others I disagreed with wholeheartedly and didn't want to accept. I initially decided not to do so, then decided to put the writing aside for tomorrow when perhaps I will be more open to change. Then I decided to think of the editing process as a communication and as my editor as a good-hearted guy with a wealth of experience in writing and copy-editing who is offering up his knowledge to my young-hearted attempts. (Which he is; which I am.) Then I decided that, in the morning, if I can see where he was trying to go with the changes and can think of a darned good reason why I disagree, I will not accept the changes.

Another thought from today: Communication is my degree, not my strong point. (Do you stand by that, my lonely reader? Do you still read this post, or did my months of silence lead you to other nightly internet habits?

Finally: My emotional parts need more close attention. Another thing that is not my strong point. I blame heritage.

to do

It's been awhile!

Tonight is a night where I feel on the precipice of change. Like the night before the day you wake up and smell fall in the air. The first discernible sign of...

(maybe not knowings = excitement in these instances)

I am ignoring my duties to flirt with possibilities in my mind. Feels good. Tomorrow will hurt, as it always does. ('OH no, I have no time,' I will think, promptly ignoring all the valuable and quite useful time that I had the night before, thus become a self-inflicted victim of circumstance.)

What if? and why? and maybe? and wow... have all been cluttering the passage ways that would lead to answers to:

1. Please describe the nature of the proposed mentorship. How would you like to work together?
2. What ideas do you have about the use of your available time in the MJDL?
3. What type of activities other than rehearsals might interest you to structure, or about which you imagine, having an exchange?
4. Write about anything else you would like the CHIME panel to consider

All made the more confusing by the fact that I'm not answering the questions for myself, but for someone I much admire.

I think that's all for tonight.

(For the record, I am quite happy, just tired and distracted.)

Hello, old friend

I have been re-experimenting with an old idea of late. I believe it is going well.

I am looking forward x10 to one week from Tuesday, when I will begin one week of vacation. I have an urge to spend a week somewhere that is the complete opposite of the City, which may indeed be where I am going, but I wish it were the woods. So, what I mean to say is that I wish I could spend a week in the woods instead of a week in two cities that are, in different ways, both the complete opposite of the City.

I met with an old friend last Monday, who is in transition- moving to New York. She said she felt a gravitational pull towards the city, "I am a New Yorker," she said, "I'm just so happy there." I feel the same about San Francisco. After having spent a year here, I feel almost qualified to say, "I am a San Franciscan." I still love all the quirky things about this city that draw in tourists (aside: come and stay in the hotels. There is a 10% hotel tax, part of which goes to fund the arts. This money is doled out through a Grants for the Arts funding program, which Dandelion Dancetheater didn't get this year, but all the same come stay in our hotels. And see some dance while you're here.), but more importantly I love LIVING here. I love biking through Golden Gate Park as part of my daily commute. I love getting home and walking down the street to my local worker-owned vegetarian co-op to get food for dinner. (I love realizing that the fact that this store exists is proof that I live in San Francisco.) I love how I can get just about anything from corner stores on Irving and that I really don't have to go to a Target, let alone Wall-mart. I love that I have an apartment with rent control.

I love how accepting this city is of art, and in consequence how much is here. And how, as I begin to take in more of it, I also realize that there is room for growth.

A wise man once said some paraphrase of, "Find a place you love to be, and you will find avenues for your dreams to take shape."

To sum up:
I love this city.
Things have happened this past year.
I can see the beginnings of more happenings to come.
I want to stick around.

In a strange twist of fate, my life comes full circle

"How small could my world get?" could be the question. And the smaller it gets the more fascinating intricacies I find, so that the old woman version of me could spend each day marveling over a different section of the twists and turns that brought me back to where I started. (I just read The Stranger, sorry for the plagerism, Camus.)

Where did I start? Two months early; too small for the world, I was born anyway, not at all willing to let a silly physical ineptitude stop me. And, a little later, I was holed up in an incubator while my body caught up with my desire to be a part of it all.

Where am I now? One reading of the events could say: One year early. Not yet physically ready to be a part of what I was so desirous of. Recovering (still), not yet ready, trying to catch my physicality up with the feelings that what is here now right in front of me is what I want, if only my body would say yes just as much.

However, what I really meant to say when I started this entry was that I wrote some words that were published in something that went on paper and was was distributed to many people. And, in a strange twist of fate, the subject of my interview article was a professor at the school which I left a year early to come out to this fabulous City and try new, real-world, non-academic things. Like, apparently, writing about one of the professors from the school.

One final statement: ah, never mind. It's late for this old bird.

Huzzah!

I did it! One week down, (out of ten).

Today I was TIRED, with a capital everything.
Many apologies to the roommates who saw me before coffee.
Since coffee didn't happen until noon, many apologies to everyone who ran into me before lunch.

It was funny what a bad mood I was in in class. It was one of those gross days, I was convinced that all my premonitions and insecurities were right and I was, in fact, the worst dancer in the world. Everything was coming together to confirm the daemons in the back of my mind, and whoa were they right. Bah! Why try! Arg!

Luckily I have trained for long enough to know that when those voices are loud enough not to quiet with a little chastising, you give them a designated spot in the bleachers and fill the rest of the audience with the information coming in. That noise is usually loud enough to provide enough of a buffer to keep going. This can sometimes give your attention to the detail of the instruction a greater focus, as you must focus on the class itself in order to ignore the hullabaloo coming from the designated bleacher area.

So today the hullabaloo was really loud, and I was trying to focus instead on learning the first jumping combination of the class, and then on keeping my torso strong and stable and using my feet to capture and rebound momentum in the first jumping combination of the class, and then the combination ended and I realized:

I just DID the first jumping combination of class. Actual jumps, not "getting back into jumping" jumps, real ones, with pointed toes and straight knees at the top.

Huzzah. Ten months out and counting.

stories inbetween

comma comma comma period, exclamation point? question? mark. period! (oh, parentheses.)

close, but not quite

I almost got bored, so I decided to write a blog. I wanted to remember what it was like to record and recap. I used to do this obsessively, as in, today I ate: cereal (the kind with more calories) and milk and a banana and a salad with non-fat dressing and an apple and some stir fry with tofu and... I worked out on the elliptical for 45 min and pushed myself hard but I didn't do any sit ups and I missed a double turn en de dans during the second combination but I finished all my homework and I drank enough water. I still have laundry to do tomorrow, and I should call my parents because I spent all my social time for tonight talking to my boyfriend. My goals in life are A) B) and C) and my goals for this semester are a) b) and c) and my goals for this month are a) b) and c), so that makes my goals for tomorrow X) Y) and Z).

And then I stopped doing that, because...

Loosing track can be a way to find yourself.

Where am I now?

Unknowingly somehow I have a position, something I thought of but in the not-possible sense. And somehow that position entitles me to tell people to do things and to calm them down when they are worried and make them worry when they have not been prudent. And often I make mistakes. But I hope I am learning.

Somehow and knowingly I am not where I thought I would be, and not where I want to be, but maybe understanding while still denying what I need to do to move on. (move past, move up, go forward, press onwards, develop, expand, sheer away, pare down, crystallize, and flower.)

Indisputably there is more I could be doing. Indisputably I am doing a lot. Indisputably I am hardest on myself, and not as hard as I'd like to be.

Sometimes I'd like to be tucked away in a place where I wouldn't have to think, where I could go back to having someone take care of me. Othertimes I'd like to go to a place where I am all by myself with no responsibilities to caretakers or others. Most-times I realize that the people around me are essential to how I construct myself, and that I will not go from a) to b) or elsewhere without them.

Thank you to those.

Hello world.

Once I wrote a computer program that made the screen say, "Hello world." Once I played soccer, once I played the piano, once I played the guitar, then the flute. I was good at math, understood science, and passed all the tests, but I forgot it all the next day. Once I thought I'd be a webdesigner, once I thought I'd be a photographer, on the photojournalist side, or maybe just audition portraits. Once I thought I'd write. (More than once.) More than once I've also thought that I don't want to do anything for money that mattered to me because, once someone gives me money for it, they have influence over what I produce, and then it is no longer child of my own creation.

Maybe I want to create.

But I don't know in what.

Other than in this fashion: asdkfjlsafjawoeifjslkdfjsdla l sfjoawi jfl fsof wl k lkfjowe klsj dia o lsdkfj awoie kdlf bie leio cmsaofjem skfh8en ksjfdklaew dkf dkjwef di03 sjkos;fn ode so ef li fa sf0 ska; viwf .. sadfoijw .saf.

...
.
..
.

Wouldn't you?

I would like to write about the fact that I like writing blogs. In fact, I truly enjoy the activity. I like thinking that maybe somehow I am more interesting, or at least better understood for my already existing interestingness, because I write them.

I would like to discuss how I don't think that all blogs are good, but that the ones I enjoy reading I find very good, and I think they should be made into a book, and preserved as an indication of the times we live in.

I would like to say that I think writing blogs is a very selfish thing to do, at least in the way I do it. And I think that everyone should have more than one entirely selfish activity that they do. My other selfish activities include dancing and bike riding and eating and sleeping and, most of the time, working. Sometimes I go out, and that too, is selfish.

Sometimes when I have free time to think, which is mostly when I'm on my bike and coasting through the Panhandle, I like to think of names for books that will never get written and never get published. One is "A Guide to San Francisco for the Little Moneyed and Easily Amused." Another is "I Don't Really Believe this Light Should be Red: Cyclists' Interpretations of San Francisco." And finally, "Blog it Out: A Cultural History."

nottin doin

I can't get anything done lately.

I did... the dishes, and ate some chocolate. I also cooked some tofu and made rice in the rice cooker, managed a hot and cold shower, and I think I made my bed this morning. (Yes, I did.) I sent eleven emails and made three phone calls, but the one I didn't make is on my mind.

I took a ballet class and an itty bitty bit of a pointe class. I remembered why I love the power that comes from the strength it takes to be delicate.

I rode my bike.

I sat on my futon.

I promised to always talk about big deals.

Today

Today, I biked the width of the San Francisco peninsula. I saw water at both ends, and I got fantastic sunburn. In about three days it will turn into some fantastic tan lines, indicative of the tee-shirt I wore today.

Today, I met with a long lost friend from my hometown. She's been living in San Francisco and miserably practicing law for five years. About a year ago, she told me she hated her job and her only joy in life was knitting. Today she told me that a week and a half ago, she gave two weeks notice at her law firm and, in about three days, will be starting her own interior design company with a friend and working for DivineCaroline.com.

Today, I missed about four phone calls.

And I wrote a blog.

Yesterday I talked on a web cam for quite a while.

c'est ca

The morning after the party,
I woke up when she left the apartment.
I made myself eggs and coffee.
I picked up my dress from the floor and hung it up.
I showered;
I brushed my teeth.
I called my parents and told them
I wasn't coming home until August.
"I'll miss you," said my mother.
"The weather's better in August," said my father,
"and more vegetable will be ripe."

untimely

I am frustrated by things outside of my control. The scheduling of things, the intentions of others, the amount of seconds in an hour.

This area of the city smells like urine and cigarettes. The women I see are either too skinny and frantic or too fat and lethargic. I don't understand how these people survive, considering that, while I am apparently much better off than they, I am amazed that I survive at all.

Walgreens is an incredibly stupid store. "Walgreens exploits everything," said a piece of graffiti art I saw recently. "Walgreens is dumb. They sell all this pointless crap - even their groceries aren't real groceries," I said a while back. "But real groceries by whose standards?" he said. "Mine, of course," I said. I spent $5.19 at Walgreens today, on credit. Then I went and worked about long enough to pay it off.

Maybe my inability to see past my own standards leaves me frustrated. I remember a time when I optimistically understood everything - lateness, bad moods, poor performance, lack of will, it was all understood with a relentless compassion. Perhaps, with this wide swath of forgiveness, I was hoping someone would offer me the same.

What, may I ask, am I writing about?

I wish the bus would have come on time tonight, so that I wouldn't have let her down.

I'd kind of like to get drunk off that left-over bottle of champagne on the counter, but drinking a bottle of champagne that has sat around since New Years by yourself just seems more pathetic than it would be worth.

So, you know, I'm writing a blog instead.

urban living

So.

I am sitting in my "home office," listening to the sounds of my roommate's TV and sloppy lovemaking, and remembering what my friend said the other day, "Families are supposed to live together. Lovers are supposed to live together. Complete strangers are not supposed to live together! It's just this weird urban thing!!"

So it is.

It's raining today, which means I may not opt to ride my bike. :( I didn't ride yesterday because my body was exhausted from riding for about 2 weeks, so I was jazzed to get to ride today after a day of rest. I already feel a lot stronger, and I'm convinced riding a bike is one of the best decisions I ever made.

Hmm.

I don't have any pressing work to do, and yet I'm so used to working whenever I'm not dancing or buying groceries or doing physical therapy that I feel like I MUST sit down in front of the computer.

And write a blog, I guess.

I may be writing a dance article soon this summer and have been asked to submit ideas. ACK! First journalistic experience EVER, and not only am I writing, I'm also coming up with the idea? Welcome to the dance world. There aren't enough good people to spread the work around. Thus, journalism major newbie is possibly getting an assignment far out of her experience.

How exciting.

If I hadn't spent so much money recently on this exercise ball I'm sitting on and a present for my father, I would go to a cafe and get away from the sounds coming from the room next door.

BAH! Urban living for the poor artist, who is not starving because she just made herself french toast.

Mmm.

bicycle, bicycle, bicycle.

I rode my bike to and FROM work today. From was more of an accomplishment, considering the fact that it is: a] uphill, and b] at 11:00 at night. But, after getting to work and feeling utterly unnecessary for the amount of business we had, giving two weeks notice and having my boss basically say, "yeah, that's fine. It'll be easy to take you off the schedule, you're not really working here anyway," and then being dyslexic and closing the cash drawer almost $20 short, I needed some release. Biking uphill at night through San Francisco was a good one.
I am on the verge of becoming the spokeswoman for using your bicycle as transportation. I have more energy, sleep better, have more time... it's fabulous. Ride a bike. It will change your life!
I also have more energy at 12:46 pm, which is maybe not the best situation. Oh well. I'm not a necessary part of work anyway... it'll be ok if I'm not all there tomorrow.
SERIOUSLY. I don't like the feeling of being totally dispensable. At least, with my other two jobs, I know there's a reason I'm valuable to those employers. And I'm more passionate about the subject AND there's more room for me to make the job what I want it to be. So, basically, they're great, they're perfect, and now they've grown into positions that can pay my way and I can quit the coffee shop.
I agonized over how I was going to do it, told myself I had to speak to my boss in person and do it today, and then finally when I told him, it seemed to be no big deal. And it's not. There are lots of cute girls out there who will make lattes and be nice to the customers. So, that's good. They can have my job.
Is it dumb to feel loyalty to something that I knew would always be temporary? It's turned out to be a shorter position that I imagined- I thought I would be at the coffee shop for at least a year. It's been a little over 6 months, and work I've wanted has just fallen into my lap. I still feel bad about quiting. Even though it's no big deal.
I am rambling, big time.
Zzzzz.

5 things

My pilates instructor says that by September I'll be a Super Dancer. Sounds great, sounds past due, sounds like something that, if I don't actually work on, won't happen (ever).

I've thought of five things that I think would help me -

1. Get up earlier, consistently
2. Ride my bike
3. Journal
4. Eat like an athlete
5. Night-time mini workouts

I also made a diagram and list of ways these things help and ways the reinforce each other. I'd explain it, but I need to go roll out my I-T band, do some ab work, and get to bed so I can work on goal #1 tomorrow.

Night, you. I know you're my only reader.

Clean-ish

Today, while folding my laundry, I had sudden inspiration for a new project: Project New Clothes. I was inspired by the fact that most of my clothes are sweats, t-shirts, etc., and most of them are faded, have stains, etc. Maybe inspired is the wrong word.

So, Project New Clothes commences tonight with me taking a good hard look at my bank account and then creating a few rules. Rule #1: shop primarily at thrift stores. Rule #2: Feel ok about being picky.

I hate clothes shopping.

First Off

The title: A tribute to one of my newest skills in life: fast speaking in phrases I tend to say all day, such as, "Would you like a fork for that?" or "Would you like a bag?" or "Would you like your receipt?" or "Sorry, we don't take American Express" -which doesn't relate to the title of this blog, except that I do tend to say it a lot.

I am happy to report that at this point in my life I am saying those phrases less often. I only say them on weekends, while during the week I remain in pursuit of things that matter to me. I dance, when I can. And I work for my dance school and a dance company, doing the necessary work that keeps art alive in capitalism. I've found that I know nothing about it but am pretty good at it. I am the database queen, and I wrote a damned good half sentence for a grant application the other day. I feel like the more I know about how art -specifically dance- survives, the more I'll be able to dream about my place in it. For that is about all I know, I am connected by umbilical cord to dancing.

God, the weekends. I LOATH the weekends, and I hate that I actually look forward to Mondays in contrast. In an attempt to enjoy Saturday and Sunday, I always make plans. Productive and fun things I will do that will make my weekends feel a little more like my time. It hasn't worked yet. In the pursuit of an artistic life, the daily grind is a weekend grind, and no matter how I plan around it, it consistently swallows my whole weekend.

Next time you are bored, reader, have a conversation with an hourly employee in retail or the food industry. It is my belief that we all have interesting stories to tell. Stories of lives outside, stories of bigger dreams, and sometimes tragic hidden stories of bigger dreams that got stuck behind the need and then addiction to the security of a good sized paycheck. (Dear xxx, you are a damned good barista, but please stop working so much and write a screenplay, like you've dreamed of. For your own good. Dear xxx, you know you don't want to sell soap forever. Pick up your camera. Dear xxx, you have more in you than Bloomingdales. Find something that lets you break your own beauty out of you.)