you're tried science, you've tried art

i am pouring myself out for people and plants and dogs. but i don't feel like i'm running out. yet.

i get up in the morning and i drive to my sister's house to feed her dogs and walk them and cast worried looks at the ambiguous wound on belle's nose. i go get coffee and i take myself to work, where i am always surprised by how much work i actually do. i go home at lunch to plant flowers and meet the new neighbours, or i go visit the dogs again, or i have coffee with a friend, or i force myself to go to the store and buy the bread that i told my roommate i would buy the nite before but i didn't and didn't end up coming home so it's not like she would have had the bread in her possession before now anyway.

i think wistfully sometimes of the days when i didn't have access to a car or didn't choose to drive it because there were days when i didn't have somewhere to be right before work, or anywhere that i had to go at lunchtime, or anywhere that i had to be right after work. i think about that, because those were the days when i did so much extracurricular work at the vineyard, and natalie worked there, and rick k was around, and i had a laptop that worked, and i would go next door to the church and write through my whole lunch break because there was nothing else i wanted to do and nothing else i could do (except sometimes work on a belated lesson for small group, or pray with natalie and tiffany). i worked on the faery play. i worked on short plays and short stories and vague ideas for novels. i wrote the elevator plays almost entirely on those lunch breaks.

these days, i am better at investing in my real-time relationships. i am better about taking care of my house, treating it like a home instead of a hostel. i am interested in meeting my neighbours. i am interested in liking everybody because i am becoming hyper-aware of everyone's need to be liked. i am a better steward of my money, my talents and interests, my priorities, in so many ways. but i worry sometimes, a little. i worry because i have learned so many things in the past few years that i always wanted to know how to do... i can cook for myself now, and drive a stickshift, and run a 5K, and knit, and embroider, and use a sewing machine, and keep plants alive (sometimes), and even play a tiny bit of guitar. all of these beautiful bits and pieces of life have been opening up to me, making more things possible, making more things fun and relaxing instead of a struggle.

that's pretty good, right? that's a really great thing. i live this fantastic, sparkly life, when i think about it. it's not without grit, not without trouble, but ultimately, i live in a town that i like, and i have friends that i like, and i do interesting things almost all the time, and there are very few things that i have to do that i don't actually want to do. i mean, that's remarkable. that's incredible.

but i used to only know how to do one thing, really. i used to only really care about one thing. and i was good at that one thing, so i was fine with that. and every spare second of my time went to honing that craft, to getting better at it and restoring my soul through it, because maybe i didn't have a huge community that i was trying to commit to, or maybe i wasn't working a full-time job, or maybe i wasn't trying to learn how to ride a skateboard. y'know? good things edge out other good things. you make choices, and that's the person you become.

and writing (in case anyone here was confused about what i was referring to), for all its merits, is really a solitary activity. i can do it in the same room as someone, usually. sometimes i can't even do that, depending on how deep i need to go to get where i want to go. but even if i am in the same room as courtney, or stacie, or chanelle, or natalie, or katie, i'm not going to be able to be with them in the same way that i can be if i'm knitting, or running, or cooking, or learning how to sew, or trying not to fall off a skateboard. because if i'm writing, i'm going to be in the story. and when i come out to talk to them, i'm going to be talking about the story. i'm going to be talking about a factual uncertainty or an emotional problem of a character that is, at that moment, just as important and just as real to me as the person who is in the room with me. and i can see how that can be a little alienating. and i can see how i end up filling up all my time with being with people because i genuinely love other human beings, and after a lifetime of running ahead of the pack with a fistful of words, sometimes it is just so good to be with the pack.

writing is lonely. nobody said it would be otherwise. but i used to be so much better at just being lonely. just really embracing that, and using it - letting it compel me to create something great that would hopefully make other people feel a little less lonely because maybe they could recognise something in it.

but now i'm out of practice. i'll admit it. nobody's holding a gun to my head and making me choose dinner parties and sewing lessons over my art. and i've realised that it's not even the lack of laptop that's stopping me. (although that is something, because the days before the laptop for me were the days locked in offices in the middle of the nite, sweating blood over my inability to format a play correctly.) it's just that i am addicted to being with people who care about me, now. i am addicted to living a real life.

but i know that if i keep not-writing, i will fall to pieces that those people might not even recognise. so where do you draw the line? where do you give yourself so thoroughly to other people that you stop being your true self?

this is a new problem for me to have. maybe it's a good one.

the thing is, i've been thinking for the past year, i need to learn how to stand still. but this morning i looked around me and realised that i've been standing still for so long, without realising it. i just didn't know what it felt like when you stop running.