Wow. My first blog. A thing to be celebrated, I'm sure. Easy enough to say before writing anything of any significance - or content for that matter.
Stalling. I used to work at a summer camp in upstate Michigan. At this moment my mind is being transported back to a specific event that takes place every year early in the summer before the kids arrive. Before much of our training even begins. The swim test. It's the first or second week of June - I'm standing in my bathing suit and have shed my towel. Tiny bumps exaggerate the place where fine hairs reside on my skin. I look down at the water and all I can think is, "Seriously - this has to take place now? At this early hour? Really? God, I really have to do this, don't I?" And I'm thinking this not because I loathe swimming - quite the opposite...I really love being in and by the water. But inevitably (and I think fate plays some cosmic role in this matter), every year at swim test time, the sky is more gray (and often sending down intermittent rain drops that come straight from the coldest realms of the stratoshpere), the temperature more chilled and the lake more inhospitable than any other time of the season.
Sigh.
So there I stand, looking at the water, knowing I need to just get in, but lacking the proper ambition to do it and every time I think my feet are ready to release themselves from the dock, an invisible force keeps them locked into place. Somehow - and after countless minutes of anxiety and wanting to stick my head in the sand - I face the fact that I have to get in the water. I need to stop being a baby. And get involved.
Much like writing this blog. So I sit here, facing my laptop with the same sort of dread, anxiously anticipating what it'll feel like to jump in, knowing that once I do, it'll be no big deal.
And once you're in - you find the wonderful surprise that the lake is actually warmer than the air.
So, while I've just spend my alotment of characters typing about a years-old moment in my life that has little to do with who I am or what I do as an artist, it's been a suprisingly inviting and comfortable experience. I think I could get used to this.
Stalling. I used to work at a summer camp in upstate Michigan. At this moment my mind is being transported back to a specific event that takes place every year early in the summer before the kids arrive. Before much of our training even begins. The swim test. It's the first or second week of June - I'm standing in my bathing suit and have shed my towel. Tiny bumps exaggerate the place where fine hairs reside on my skin. I look down at the water and all I can think is, "Seriously - this has to take place now? At this early hour? Really? God, I really have to do this, don't I?" And I'm thinking this not because I loathe swimming - quite the opposite...I really love being in and by the water. But inevitably (and I think fate plays some cosmic role in this matter), every year at swim test time, the sky is more gray (and often sending down intermittent rain drops that come straight from the coldest realms of the stratoshpere), the temperature more chilled and the lake more inhospitable than any other time of the season.
Sigh.
So there I stand, looking at the water, knowing I need to just get in, but lacking the proper ambition to do it and every time I think my feet are ready to release themselves from the dock, an invisible force keeps them locked into place. Somehow - and after countless minutes of anxiety and wanting to stick my head in the sand - I face the fact that I have to get in the water. I need to stop being a baby. And get involved.
Much like writing this blog. So I sit here, facing my laptop with the same sort of dread, anxiously anticipating what it'll feel like to jump in, knowing that once I do, it'll be no big deal.
And once you're in - you find the wonderful surprise that the lake is actually warmer than the air.
So, while I've just spend my alotment of characters typing about a years-old moment in my life that has little to do with who I am or what I do as an artist, it's been a suprisingly inviting and comfortable experience. I think I could get used to this.