Performance Evaluation

I was thinking about the goals/plans I made for 2014, and wondered if I came close to realizing them. I found the list in a blog from a year ago:


In 2014, I will.....
Learn my camera! Take awesome pictures!
See lots of local professional theater
Hear lots of symphony
Go to an opera
Cook delectable new dishes
Have massages
Host dinner parties
Work on my shabby chic urban prairie projects
Ride my bike across Mackinac Bridge with my love
Laugh with my nieces and nephews
Paint my kitchen cabinets
Plant a garden
Strum
Sing
Dance
Ski
Ice Skate
Travel
Read amazing books
Write good books
Write a fantastic play
Let go of all that shit
Learn new shit

Results:
Learn my camera! Take awesome pictures!
See lots of local professional theater
Hear lots of some symphony
Go to an opera a ballet
Cook delectable new dishes
Have massages
Host dinner parties
Work on my shabby chic urban prairie projects
Ride my bike across Mackinac Bridge with my love 
Laugh with my nieces and nephews
Paint my kitchen cabinets
Plant a garden
Strum
Sing
Dance
Ski
Ice Skate
Travel
Read amazing books
Write good books
Write a fantastic play
Let go of all that shit
Learn new shit

Performance Grade: Pretty Darn Good

Areas for Growth Opportunities:

• Should I just stop putting "ski" on my list? I felt the need to do that several years ago when I equated living a crazy schedule of crazy things with contentment, but here's a secret. I don't love skiing. I'm not even sure I like it. It scares the shit out of me, and I forced myself to do it, and I'm glad I went, but I am done! New goal for 2015: Do not put "Ski" on my "Goals for 2015" list.

• It's not of vital importance that another year has passed and you have not skated on ice. What I said above.

• You did not learn how to actually use your fancy schmancy camera and you are hereby shamed. You are now required to put it on your list for 2015, with interest penalty.

• You really couldn't help not being able to the Mackinac Bridge thing, but don't strike it from 2015 just yet.

• Should you consider forgetting about all that learning how to play guitar shit and learn how to be macho? 

• Can you just admit the truth that you don't give two shits about the fucking opera?

• You spent a the last few months of this year wondering if you should quit play writing altogether. I think you still have time to consider. Remember a few days ago in a blog you were complaining about the play Other Desert Cities because it felt like something you would write? Well, I did a little digging on the writer, and he did in fact admit that the play was what he had hoped the ill-fated show Brothers & Sisters would be, and then he explained himself. The thing is, I changed my mind about him. John Robin Baitz has a lot of interesting things to say. In fact, the play that everyone raved about here in Indy was equally esteemed on Broadway and was finalist for a Pulitzer. WTF? If he is making waves writing about things that I like to write about in a similar way (no, I'm not saying I am accomplished or talented, so just relax that huff-maker, will you?) Incidentally, I also learned that he was booted from the show a year into production--a show that ABC specifically asked him to create and be show runner. That explains why the show got so stupid after the first year.  I also learned that he did not take kindly to the booting and was pretty vocal about it. So final verdict. Good move to question yourself as a writer. For now, that is enough. If you leave, do so with sweetness for what you had, not with sourness for what you missed.

Honorable Mentions:

• Garden! (Don't mention here that you killed said garden with fucking ORGANIC bug killer and that it really killed your mood over the second part of the summer.) Goal for 2015: Try again, and this time try Neem Oil!

• Urban Prairie Phase 1 complete!

• You actually painted your cupboards the last week of 2014 on a whim!

• Best books you read in 2014: Into the Wild, Half Broke Horses, Light Between the Oceans, Little Bee, Glass Castle, Mystic River

Best Accomplishment:

• I let go of all of that shit. 

I'm so proud of that shit that I'm going to underline that shit. I let go of all that shit. For 2015, you are forbidden to take on any new shit to replace this old shit.

Day Dream Rock N Roll Believer

It's cold but it's not snowing. The sun came out for the first time in weeks today, just an hour so before it was due to set. It was time for Spinning class, but I skipped it to take my dog for an early winter's walk under a streaky grey, pink, and purple sky. I just felt like being outside! We walked about three miles, when it occurred to me to attempt to walk a thousand miles next year. That's less than three miles everyday. I realized I already do that. But for some reason, I felt like I want to track my miles next year. So I will.

I put my iPod on shuffle, and for some reason, I hit repeat when "Night Moves" came on. I imagined singing it as a duet at a tiny bar with a handsome guitar player with whom I'd had a romantic history. Then I played it again and kept that little rock fantasy going. Of course I pictured myself playing guitar and looking pretty tough, too, not some coiffed up glam girl. Just a tank top, some simple jewelry, some well worn and well fitting jeans, a big belt, motorcycle boots, and my Takemine...and not slung low, thank you very much. That would be my trademark. The rocker who holds her guitar up high like those folk singers from the Fifties did. But when the song is over, I'd un-sling it of course and take my bow and do a jig, never taking myself too seriously, and always being slightly more comfortable just this side of the spotlight.

Even as a kid that song got me. I had no idea what he was talking about, but I loved the background singers, his energy, and those quiet questioning parts of the song--"longing" I guess you'd call it. I didn't know the word longing then, but I did always lean in a bit when he was "waiting on the thunder." I would picture him sleeping in his bed, then bolting upright as if he had heard something. And then just...waiting, heart pounding. And the thunder never coming.

Now I know that he did not hear something. Chances are, he thought something, and sometimes thoughts can do that to us: shaking ourselves awake, asking ourselves "Did you hear that?" 

I've been keeping late nights lately, which are making my early mornings quite unbearable. What is keeping me up at night?

Thoughts!

Thoughts of possibility. 

Thoughts of happiness.

Thoughts of resolution.

Good things are keeping me up nights, and what a welcome change that is. I had a few years where it was just the opposite. Bad things. Worries. Regrets. Fears. Profound sadness. Sleepless nights and puffy-eyed mornings. I had a couple years of finally falling asleep easily as I fell into my own, on my own, after a pleasant day on my own. The thing I remember about those days was trying just a little too hard. That's okay. Fake it til you make it, baby. That had its own special feeling of hope. And the past couple of years, I've had the easy sleep that comes when you're in love and loved back. 

But lately, I'm awake. Not in a crisis state like in U2's "Wide Awake" awake. (Damn! I love that song!) Not in that "'I just finished the first draft of my script!' jubilation of accomplishment" awake.

No, this is a Hopeful Awake.

And I'm not sure I've ever been here before. 

Specifically, there is not one single thing that is giving me hope. Not one single thing on the horizon that keeps me moving, walking, staying the course.

I've not been feeling hopeless, so it's not like I've been searching for Hope.

I have been feeling a bit confused, however.

I think it's not hope. I think it goes a step further.

I think it's trust.

I have a trust that things are going to be pretty darned good for me, and that my life is going to look pretty darned good to me.

And I have absolutely no proof of this!

It makes me want to stay up all night and write and express myself. 

It makes me want to add to that list I wrote a couple of weeks ago--my 2013 journey list.

(I added the following while jamming out and living my Rock N Roll Dreams.)

• See Joan Jett in concert!!!!

And I think I'm going to attempt to write a good rock song, not a slow, sad song, which would come much more naturally to me. But a fun song. It might be about sad news, but it's going to be funny and upbeat.

Here's how I'm going to work on that.

I'm going to listen to more good rock and surround myself with those who would rock.

Leela James got me thinking this on my walk. Leela. Leela and her beautiful afro.

Gonna change the lyrics of "Layla" (Yes! I love that song too!)  to Leela.

Other things that kept me up all night. Last night I couldn't sleep, so I watched a movie on Netflix--one from the vault because "latest and greatest" has just never been in my repertoire. "Running with Scissors." It was a memoir, pretty good, and I loved the 70s stuff. I think there was one montage too many but at least they chose good songs--"Year of the Cat" and "Blinded by the Light." I didn't think it was great, but it does make me want to read the book.

Books. Books are also keeping me up late nights. I'm reading "Getting Stoned with the Savages," a travel narrative by J. Marteen Troost. 

Blogs. Blogs are keeping me up nights. I'm finding blogs I really like, even if they aren't really that good. They're just so honest and even mundane at times, but in them, I get to glimpse into real lives, and I love it so much. I love reading about someone's Sunday and how they went to church, even though I myself am a reasonably convinced agnostic. I love reading about the snowball fight they had with their kids, even though I don't have kids. I love reading about how they hate the potholes in their streets, and how they fell in a slush puddle on their way to the office. And I love it when the next thing I know, they are lighting their grill for the first time and having a cookout, and I can actually smell it and feel the excitement of the coming spring, that first time you stand out on your deck and it's not pitch black, and the buds are just starting peek out, and you have this whole dream of summer before you, just this close. 

And I get really tempted to write blogs like that, just little snapshots of every day life, all those days that accumulate to make our life.

So I'm going to start doing that, making it part of my Journey In Place. Sometimes my theme won't be so evident. Sometimes I will not attempt to say anything astounding.

Sometimes I will just tell the plain truth, in all its magnificence and irrelevance:

Today I went to the post office and mailed off my sister's (and my niece and nephews') presents, and it felt great to learn that it would make it there by Christmas. It was a slow day at work. I finally got migrated to the new email/IM system and casually chatted with some colleagues I haven't seen in a while, and remembered just how nice it is to get along with people at work and know just a little bit about their lives. I talked on the phone at length with a guy who wants to rent my performance/rehearsal space for a few days before an upcoming gig and just really enjoyed it! Just one of those people you get along with immediately. He's an engineer by day, and lives in a cabin in the woods, was once struck by lightning and loves rock n roll! I don't usually like cover bands, but this guy has a great bluesy voice. I think I might have made a  new friend, and he goes by the name "Shock," on account of the lightning incident. I talked on the phone with a friend whom I haven't seen in a while. I made lunch plans with another friend. I looked up some things about traveling to Alaska. I listened to some country music: Lady Antebellum. I took my dog on an early winter sundown walk instead of going to Spinning. Later I saw a pic of a woman with really fit legs and wondered if I should have Spun. Nope! I made grilled cheese (provolone and sharp cheddar) and roasted pepper and tomato soup for dinner. And I dreamed of playing rock n roll in a tiny bar with tiny twinkling lights and a lively crowd.

Today was  a good day. Doesn't seem like it would be one for the books, but I'm writing about it anyway. I can't wait for the good stuff. I might miss it if I keep deciding it's not good enough to write about. I feel the lightning, but I'm not waiting on that thunder.