and I found Elvis hiding inside an exhibit at the Field Museum of Natural History.
I did a lot more, but they get labeled as "Stories That I Want To Tell But Are Too Angst-Ridden."
So here's a quick bit on some of the fun things I did in the humid months.
I tried making a game out of spotting as many elephants as I could this summer, since "To The Elephant!" became our rallying cry on Twelfth Night. It was the most random, ridiculous line from the play, and so of course it became my favorite.
The Dalek is from WizardCon 2011, in Chicago. First time I had attended something like that in twenty years. It was a lot of fun, and I was able to indulge my recent obsession with Doctor Who a bit but I've realized that as nerdy as I think I am, I am only a nerd with a small 'n."
Elvis lives amongst elephants, man-eating tigers, and a T-Rex named Sue. I found him during a trip up to the Field with my buddy Drew and his two sons. The beginning of my slow crawl out of the cave.
There's the story of how I quit my job and moved to Ireland for a year. Or how I came close to doing that.
I'll get around to telling that story, and the other one about how I walked away from the most important thing in the world to me. But not today.
Right now I'm thinking about The Pause.
All of the above-mentioned stories relate to The Pause, and how I have found it increasingly necessary in my future. Somehow, if I'm going to do anything different with my life, I need to take a pause on everything else in my life.
School started a couple of weeks ago, and so I'm back to thinking about my students' needs, and I'm grading papers and I'm working with new teachers and I'm doing all that education stuff that I do.
I'm also getting up early and going to the gym and I'm trying to eat and drink better. I have time to do this because I only have one job to concentrate on, at least for now. But even now, most of my life is filled with being focused on Work, although I'm allowing myself the occasional night out with friends.
Every now and then, though, something creeps into the back of my mind. Some strange glimpse of where I could take my life. At the beginning of the new year, just after I turned 39, I told myself I didn't want to be doing the same exact thing at 40 that I was doing at 30. It was important that I make some forward progress with my life.
I have no idea where I was supposed to be headed, but I carved out a path involving being a student for a year. That didn't quite pan out, and as I said, I'll get to that story.
But when I catch myself having that vision of a possible future, it often comes as a result of watching the below video of Joss Whedon performing on This American Life. It's a song from the musical commentary for Dr. Horrible. Watch, and then keep reading.
Okay, still with me? Great. Nice little song, isn't it? Joss is great, and one of my favorite storytellers.
But what the hell is tugging at me when I watch this? This has been a great mystery to me ever since I first saw this. Maybe it has something to do about being creative, and doing something different than everyone else. I always wanted to be that guy, but was never really able to pull it off properly. Anytime I tried to be creative, it was always done in the corners of my life, in the late nights and weekends and breaks from teaching.
If I was really creative, I probably would have pulled it off by now. People like that always find a way, don't they? They work the day job, and at night they do that amazing thing that makes them stand out and the people all point and say, "Damn, that was incredible." Maybe I'm just good at putting out mediocre creativity.
Or maybe that's not quite true. Those people usually toil as waiters and retail workers and other jobs where they can turn their brains off and save the free time for "the good stuff." For myself, a lot of my creativity and energy goes into teaching, which on its own might be considered a fine way to make one stand out. And it has been, in large part, for me.
But damn, something's been nagging at me for a long time. Something that tells me that I need to go try something else. Maybe it's an evolution from the teaching job, something more specific, but not, like, a principal or anything. Ugh.
I did the theatre thing for a while, and still do, but never felt like a Professional doing that gig. Maybe that's why I was going to go to school. To legitimize myself. The Professionals never like it when a nonprofessional stumbles into their sandbox.
The only thing I really DO know is that I'm not going to figure this out unless I take a proper Pause in my life. It's less than four months until I turn 40, and I know that time is going to be spent almost exclusively on teaching and directing and doing laundry and watching old episodes of Firefly.
Malcolm Reynolds was the captain of Serenity, and Joss Whedon is captain of his Whedonverse. I was captain of my own ship for a while, and I had a great crew, and we did incredible things. And to be honest, I've been captain of at least a dozen or so great crews, and indeed we did do incredible things. But I can't keep doing the same thing over and over and over again.
There's something there, something just out of reach, something in the corner of my eye. Something in that moment when I wake up, when the night's dreams slip away from your memory. Something that reveals itself when I'm driving to work, sitting at a stoplight, thinking about nothing.
And then it's gone. "One thing drives out another."
I feel like, if I'm ever going to figure out what that is, then I'm going to have to find a way to take a major pause in my life. And that is not an easy task to accomplish.
