thinking out loud

I don't know why I have been writing here so much lately. I've been so busy that I have had a lot of source material and not a lot of time to talk to people and share things that have been going on, so I guess I'm kind of saving it for myself for when I get to slow down for a minute and process everything. Because I am super anal-retentive about not losing things, so I save scraps of paper, fortune cookies fortunes, business cards I will never use, almost gone tubes of lip balm, emails i will NEVER need, IM conversations that I think will be good for play dialogue sometimes. That's probably pretty messed up. But I think that people should know that when they talk to me, they are being memorexed for future use. I learned from a playwriting professor in college that writers are always taking notes. Maybe that means we don't feel as much because we're always observing, even when we're living. Maybe that's why it never works when I try to be with other artists.

Anyway, this has been an absolutely insane week. I have seriously reconsidered everything about my life. I'm always talking about how I hate that young people are expected to be building toward some sort of someday conclusion, so I always try to live even when I'm building, but that's not REALLY true. I never live in the moment. I'm always building foundations, and I never see it through to a full house. One thing that I have not written at all this week is an annotation or essay for school. Exhibit A. Work has been crazy, and I don't feel like I will ever be able to establish a routine. I haven't been able to drag myself to the gym ONCE this week (probably because of the nyquil), and it seems like everytime I get used to something it changes. I wish I could be the Cara I felt like when I got back last week, that could leave anything in her wake and cut strings like scissors. I got an email today that the Omega retreat center is hiring for seasonal staff, which essentially means that there are people that go and live at this amazing holistic retreat center for 6 months, get paid, get fed, make beds or do laundry, organize workshops, or run desks, and then get to spend the rest of their time taking movement classes, yoga, tai-chi, dancing at drum circles and writing poetry- ok, that's what I would spend the rest of my time doing. But I can't just stop. I can't cut strings, put my stuff in storage and go find myself. Where the hell do I think myself is hiding? In Rhinebeck NY?

What has been most stressful this week is that I had to write a 200,000 dollar grant in like a day and a half while the staff was dismantling itself and I was quickly coming to the realization that I could very well be the last one standing, which means doing like 3 jobs on top of the 2 I already feel like I have. Which really mirrors my last job. I've invested so much here in building the Youth Media Institute, that I really don't want to leave it behind. And I don't want to leave my teens behind. They are AMAZING, and I think that we have a lot of great work to do this year. So it's interesting that crisis has kind of made me more committed to buckling down and reassessing priorities. Dropping all the balls I've been juggling and picking up what I can. For which purpose, I've created a blocked schedule for myself, so that I can make sure nothing slips. So I realized that I only have weekend nights unscheduled. To be fair, the R&S stuff is not always all of those nights, just things I try to keep blocked off for Our Sisters, group, Street Theatre, the new planning committee for Trans stuff. So, ok, yes, potentially all of those nights- but not always.



And that's before even scheduling in What's Up and ACME meetings, and me and Lexi are talking about starting up a women's writing group through R and S... So between work, and school, and the gym, and I swear I have friends that I like to see sometimes, I don't really feel like I even have time to worry about relationships and crap. But then I think of how I hate when people say that. Because yes, relationships are work, but they shouldn't be a burden. They should ease the rest of the burden. And I do feel like I always go for men who are at least close to as busy as me so that I don't feel like I'm neglecting them, because I hate feeling guilty about all of my other commitments. But I really feel like if both people understand that there's a lot of other stuff in life and enjoy the time that they can have together, that it shouldn't be a huge stress to be with someone. But I've always viewed the men I've been with as like a teammate, so if someone doesn't see a relationship as a partnership, like an opportunity to take on life together, then I guess I can see how they will always get frustrated with yet another thing they have to juggle. The whole mars and venus thing I suppose. Dating scares me. I really don't understand how it's done in real life. Stupid ALL school. But I do know that I'm done being the other woman, done kissing frogs that I don't even want to turn into princes just because a warm body seems better than an empty bed, and I'm done investing time in men that I'm really just trying to fix. Men are not houses, and fixer uppers are not worth the investment.