My fear of missing something (FOMS) is getting annoying these days. Being isolated in a small, quaint village in the West Midlands is not helping this feeling any. In the U.S. this place might be called a town, here it is definitely a village. Now, don't get me wrong, how many other people out there get to have all that I have now? That being a place to live in and around all things Shakespeare, my favorite author, and a partner to experience it with, Vicky... yeah, not many. So I'm not ungrateful. It's the FOMS that's annoying me these days.
I feel like I'm missing out on all the other pieces of my life at the moment. In New York right now, one of my best friends and dance partner of a dozen years is finally coming into her own time, and doing some really great things... I'd really like to be a part of that. In North Carolina, there are some really wonderful people enjoying the life I wish I had sometimes, working to live instead of living to work, and being within a car's drive of a dance and art culture unlike anything else on the planet... I get a bit jealous. Two people I know in Baltimore are just plain amazing, and those kinds of friends are the rarest in my world. Two others in D.C. that are always the most welcoming and generous people in the world. So, yeah, I wish I could see them and hang out with them a great deal more. My family is in Connecticut, and there is no place more relaxing than lying on the couch there without a care more than, "What's for dinner?" Then there is San Francisco. All things San Francisco, except the earthquakes, are pretty freakin' incredible. I get FOMS something fierce over here.
I suppose it was about time that I started missing the other pieces of my life, or the life I once knew. I understand all about giving up parts of my life, for a time, so that I can achieve something great. In fact, without the sacrifice, would we really feel that we had achieved something greater than we ever had before, there at the end of it? Probably not. Do I think it's worth it? Definitely. This is just a moment of weakness in what will become fours years worth of resolve.
Damn Facebook.
At the end of this whole thing I'll not just have created something worthwhile, a contribution to the academic expanse that occupies this world, I'll have this experience which could never be quantified by a research project or memoir. Which as I think back to all those times I miss most, is true of all of them as well. Singapore, California, Chicago, Raleigh, NYC, and Wilton can never be explained, or written about, or documented in the ways that they should be. So, it is quite something to realize, as I sit here at my desk in Stratford-upon-Avon, readying myself to finish off two term papers and sit down to design a set for a Midsummer Night's Dream, that one day this too will be a time I miss and will want to return to. Well, maybe not return to RIGHT now, but a time somewhere in the vicinity of right now.
The best I can do is make some great memories here. Try my best to recount the days when Shakespeare was my muse, and the writing, art and life I experienced was one worthy of recount. I'm getting misty in my dotage (all of 37 years old and I think I'm old...)
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing. -- Macbeth, V.v
Year 1, Day 110: Words Written -- 7,903 +/- (in term paper vernacular)
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