This weekend went by so fast.
I’m happy, because that means it didn’t drag on.
But I’m also bewildered, because it’ll be Monday before you know it.
I had a lot of fun. I decided to apply to grad school — the program I’ve been dreaming of, at the school I’ve been dreaming of since I was a school kid.
And suddenly, that means a flurry of work. Trying to compose letters of request for a letter of recommendation. Dredging my transcript to remember what courses I did well in, what professors I should try to contact, and what my time tables are, to get everything together before admission deadline. The admissions are rolling, but with only 22 spots per year available, rolling admissions also means the early bird gets the worm.
This is different. Whereas in undergrad life, my focus was on finishing so I could get the hell out of college, going to grad school for documentary means getting to do what I really want to do, and work on a doc that I brought from conception to completion. This is a massive concept.
Anyway, there’s a lot more work to do. I didn’t wrap up my work, and it’s time to go to bed. But I did get a lot of work done, and I still need to meet with my professors and give them my written letters of request. That’s not to mention writing a statement or purpose for grad school, writing a treatment for a documentary (departmental admission), and writing my academic resume to both include with my letters of request as well as with my admissions materials.
From here on in, every week will be full of work to do. I still have to cut my documentary to about nine minutes, to submit with my admission materials. But you know what? It’s happy work. And it’s been a long, long time since I’ve engaged in happy work.
For the first time in a long, long time, I feel a spark of life within me. I feel my blood begin to run warm; I feel stories within me that need to be told. It’s scary, but it’s a bit beyond me now. I feel like it’s not me that’s moving — the movement is happening through me. I couldn’t do all this on my own. Something is happening within me.
I think that now, after the baby, after my life has imploded and collapsed, after my self-image has been demolished and the rebuilding of me has begun, I’m still quite myself. I’m still forlorn and absent, but I’m more ebullient when I’m with my friends and people who understand me. I can be more honest about life and how shitty adulthood can be, but I feel like that it frees me.
It’s like living in a building that’s a reconstruction of the house that you grew up in. It’s not the same house, but it’s the same vibe, the same feel. Some parts are larger, some greater utility has been built in to suit a new stage of life, but you rebuilt it to be cozy, while still being functional. That’s how I feel like I am now. Built so that if an earthquake or tsunami hit it, the walls are made of paper, so no one inside gets hurt, like old the Japanese rural houses.
Built to be flexible, built to be pliable. Because everything collapses.
I’ve learned not to take life too seriously, because it’s all bullshit in the end. Just try to make people smile, to lighten someone’s load, and give a bit more than you get.
