Me/Chicago/Intuition/Analysis/Schooling

I spent most of this past week in Chicago. I had intended to use that to spur on the blogging with a general diary of "today we went to the museum. I love the museum," and so on and so on. It didn't happen. I was too immersed.

I did go to the museums, and I did see some fabulous (as well as some merely good) theater, and ate delicious things and filled my thoughts with art and food and the beautiful water. And I felt better than I've felt in months and months. Part of it, of course, is getting to see someone I almost never get to see, and feeling like the center of attention, but I also spent a fair amount of time on the ride back trying to figure out what happened to me in Chicago. Why did I feel so in focus, so functional? And why did I dread going home so much, because I really really did. My whole body felt like a lump that just scrunched up into a little ball whenever I thought about it.

In some ways, New York has gotten too easy I think. It's not easy to do, but it's easy to understand. I have to seek out things to feel wonder towards. And sure, if I lived in Chicago, it would be just the same, but the reach out of the comfort zone is important, and the vitality of the scene in the 2nd City was much more impressive than I had expected it to be. All I could think was, "Friday night I have to go back to my real life." Wait, what? Isn't everything I do part of my real life? Why can't my real life be like this? And why don't I like this "real life" thing to begin with? In short, what the hell is going on with me?

I love New York. Really, deeply, and truly. I am a New Yorker; it is my home. I hate the off-Broadway electrician thing. Not doing it: I like being at my job, I just can't stand barely supporting myself, no health insurance, having to live with other people, and on top of it all, little to no ownership of the projects I work on, or any kind of reassurance that there will be another project next week or next month. This is no way to live. I need to be assisting on big shows and designing my own, and I'm really not sure how to go about all that.

So then I was thinking and thinking.... and I thought "really I need a path and a plan and a purpose. If I had a way to really fix this, just working at it would make me feel so much better." The obvious solution: Grad School. OY.