At the edge of the horizon

At the edge of the horizon
At the edge of Japan

Thursday, September 26, 2013

Some thoughts upon awaking from a deep sleep...

I started this post as a short Facebook post, then realized it had turned into a "James Altucher-like" status update, which I felt was too much for my friends to deal with, so I moved it over here to my blog.
This isn't Japan related, just FYI to my readers.  I'll update shortly with a new post relating to my Japan life birthday this year.  It's more personal than most of my posts, but it's also just a recollection of a distant memory.

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This month, 10 Years ago, I decided to abort a Directing Theater MFA based in NYC due to a last minute egregious tuition increase (that I wasn't even aware of until I officially enrolled).  I was then suddenly left without a real plan for my post-undergraduate life.  In addition, my then-boyfriend who I had been in love with had just suddenly ended our relationship as soon as I had moved to NYC, and I found myself in a real emotional free fall.  I didn't have a job either, as I had botched a nice film related internship that was given to me due to my own negligence and naivete.  That was the summer of the 2003 blackout in NYC.  I remember being up on the 25 floor of one of those new condos near Penn Station, sweating because the windows couldn't really be fully opened and deciding that I needed to get out of that place.  The next morning, I went over to where my godmother was staying and suddenly we ended up leaving the city since it looked like the power would be out for a few days and the potential for riots was possible.  Since I didn't have a way to contact anyone due to the cellphone overload in the city because of the blackout, my friends where I was staying didn't know where I was until about a week later, when I came back from Boston. My friend K. thought I was nuts to just pack up and leave suddenly one morning without telling anyone.  That was just the way I was at the time.

After that mini-retreat from the city, one day, while aimlessly walking around Manhattan pretending to try to find a job and finding that process of rejection stressful to deal with at the time (I was constantly told that I wasn't qualified because I had no prior experience and this was on top of heartbreak), I decided to make a new life for myself instead.  So, I packed up everything from my friend's apartment, bought my ticket home and decided to spend the next few months saving enough money to move to London instead.

It was a simple decision.  I didn't even have a job in London.  But I just followed my intuition.  I jumped before I had a real plan, but I knew it was going to work out.

What happened to that girl who was spontaneous and fearless?  Why has she become so cautious and careful now?

I made a few birthday resolutions to counter my current psychological milieu, so here they are:

Today is the first day of the rest of my life and I've decided that the rest of my life is only going to be awesome, full of rich, deep experiences, beauty, adventure, love, complexity, creativity, forgiveness, sensuality, the mystical, the unknown, newness, courage, and an opening of myself towards the natural world. I've been protective and closed off, unforgiving to myself and a struggling perfectionist for a while now, so I think it's time to make a change.

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