June Gloom

I can't believe it's June already. The last two weeks of May were sort of chock full of stuff; I remember saying to a friend of mine somewhere around May 21, that I don't remember being that busy, ever, knowing what I knew I would have to be doing during that time, and here it is, over. Hey, and that friend said to me, don't worry about anything until the two weeks are over. Well? The two weeks are over, and here I am.

I guess that's the point of this overlong gloomy entry; you can pretty much stop reading here.

...

Today was a gorgeous day. There was more than one moment that I thought, wouldn't it be nice to be at home on a blanket in the backyard with my book...? I made myself take a fifteen minute walk this afternoon - normally I try to do it in the morning; since I was off Thursday and Friday last week, I felt guilty about not being at my desk, but I had to get out in the sun at some point. I had a lot to do but I got most of it taken care of, including the one thing I was anxious about: scheduling my Acrobat training for later this month. This department handles training in a very odd way; making sure I jump through all the right hoops is a bit of a workout.

Patrick stayed home and recuperated from the long weekend. He's pretty much finished up in the kitchen, and I spent about three hours tonight after work, cleaning up and putting away some things. I already have a quite large pile of stuff for the garage sale we're planning for later this summer. Either here at my house or my mom's, I haven't decided. The last garage sale here was pretty lame. We'll see.

Today I just feel a little bit like I've got nothing to look forward to. Which is totally untrue: I have the show at the theater pretty much every weekend through July, and the flute choir's big 20th anniversary concert coming up in three weeks, and I'm reading a great new book... but I don't know. Feeling a bit blah right now.

I know all this makes for a fascinating blog entry...! (My friends who read my blog and also occasionally get emails like this from me are all thinking, "well, at least this one doesn't start, "Dear Sarah/David/Paul/Patty...")

Actually, I was thinking today about trying to write something more real than these posts. I keep saying I want to, and there are days when I sit down at the computer and I could write forever (today is not one of those days; this stupid entry is a struggle), but I'm not sure if those things that I could write forever, while amusing to ME, are of any interest to anybody else. I would love to quit writing the semi-autobiographical crap I put out here, but I don't know. Can I? Do I keep saying, "I don't know" in this entry?

I do realize that I would need to edit whatever I were to write better than I edit these postings...!

My friend Bo was sort of getting on me the other day about my stupid decision not to go to CalArts way back in 1999 or whenever it was when I was accepted. We were talking about the past: he's a bit older than I am, but it's not often that he makes comments like this to me. He doesn't go around giving advice, which I know is why I like him so much. I also know why I didn't go and I'm not really regretting it all that much, myself... but I do wonder what that experience would've been like.

Somebody's mom at the recital yesterday said to me, "But what motivates you?" I think basically she was saying, "But you're so old: why do you keep putting yourself through this?" She's a nice lady and just curious, but it was kind of an insulting question. Or maybe I took it that way, and I shouldn't have. I didn't really answer her, I mean, there were a ton of people around and it's hard to answer that kind of question on the spot, but the answer is, I do it because I love it. I love being the big fish in a little pond, I love getting all nervous and freaked out. As hard as it is to find the time, as flaky as I can be, I love playing the flute, and I don't want to stop doing it. Maybe she needs to do something she loves for 26 years in a row; maybe she'll understand then.

Anyway, back to what my friend Bo was saying: later, when we were talking about something else, he made an interesting comment about regret. He said, don't start regretting your past so much that it makes you regret your present, too.

Well, I think I'm paraphrasing ol' Bo, there, but I'm pretty sure that's what he meant. There are a ton of things I wish I'd done differently, a million things I wish I'd said, an equal amount of things I wish I hadn't said, and some of those things? I said or didn't say just yesterday. I don't know. I don't know! As much as I wish there was, there is no time machine, goddammit! You can play the "what if" game until your life is unrecognizable to you: but so what?

If I could make it all go away, would I?

This is a bad mood to be blogging in ("way to bring down the room, Irene!"). So I'll go get in bed and read for awhile before going to sleep. I'm sure I'll feel better tomorrow.