While many people marked their new calendar years with resolve and commitment to introspect and delve, I went clandestinely with embracing perspective. I went backwards. On purpose.
I intersected winter's rest revisiting an old habit: I took my girls to a show they had seen dozens of times in the theater where I started to work when the oldest was a toddler. Yet it had been at least five years since being there. Admittedly, I was looking to excite memories of an easier time. Pleasantly, that transpired.
And sitting there in the soundtrack of a previous employment as the theater darkened and I watched recognition and memory awash my children's faces, I came to mentally recollect the perks of this job, and all the jobs I have enjoyed as an adult. One indubitable theme emerged: fun.
Every job I have had as an adult has been fun.
There, at the theater, I had the great pleasure of not just raising my girls with backstage access but bringing loads of guests to see masked theater productions, bundling whole birthday crews into shows, and even staging our own abridged version of The Nutcracker on a real stage with lighting cues followed by cookies and cocoa in the lobby for 6-year-old birthday treats.
Another longstanding employment: field trips for grandpas and grandmas. Yes, I think up what and how to have fun within a two-hour driving radius from town, packing a walk-on passenger van full of senior citizens as a captive audience. When people ask me how I come up with our destinations, I honestly answer that I figure if I think it would be any kind of fun then others probably will too. And I absolutely enjoy pressing people's boundaries - I love pulling people to a working farm and spending an hour on chores on setting a table for community lunch, or highlighting a hidden cultural history in a local legacy center, and in general making new things accessible through the passion of the people who do them.
Sometimes I am a little ahead of myself and don't even know it: twelve years ago I started a supper club for senior citizens. Each month we meet in a restaurant for a 3-8 course meal I have coordinated with the restaurants. If only I had been writing up these monthly dinners before the foodie map caught up with this city. Nevertheless, it gives the 20 people (and 20 more on waiting lists) something social and delicious to share month in and month out. And it guarantees me a dinner date once a month. Fun!
Perhaps most significantly over the past eight years, I infuse a cooperative preschool with mess-making, surprise, and socially-studded play-scapes. They call me a teacher.....yet a more distinct misnomer ever existed when I think about my primary scope of teaching being offering an example of place and independence for the youngest social citizens of our city. It's never entirely predictable, it requires flexibility and I probably hear "I love you" in my work day more than most people. Any job surrounded by fans, no matter their age, is a clear winner.
I have also played in sales, peddling artisan clothing and jewelry for local makers. Really, there's nothing un-fun about indulging people who want to buy themselves or others a gift. And while I can't generally stand the sort of sugared sincerity that lures kids like my teen into her favorite sundry shops for brand loyalty, diplomacy in honesty is enjoyable to deliver.
So, when fun is a consistent part of the work-a-day, I must be on to something.
I'm not entirely sure it replaces the security of benefits, but on the occasions I have gotten closer to the inflexibility of un-fun jobs, I practice nostalgia to notice that fun has its benefits too.
Sunday, January 5, 2014
Saturday, January 4, 2014
Coming Home Can Be the Best Part of Going Away
I say this with trepidation. Lest you get starry-eyed for the home state apple of my eye.
Three winters ago, in Boston between big snowstorms, I was asked if I ever considered moving away. Retrospectively, it was a Big question, not a superficial query, but that's hindsight for you.
The city in which I live is growing at an astronomical rate that drove up the housing market, rent and makes it highly unusual to meet someone here who isn't from somewhere else.
I'm a rare breed, a native.
My city is a Best Place for sustainability, retirement, bicycling, parks system, livability, and a zillion more things that make people keep wanting to move here. We're still an outpost of affordability to those coming from other places. Of course several factors influence a big move, and in my case it is made even more complicated by having kids and they have a dad. So without having seriously considered it previously, my answer proved to be a simple as well as a definite No.
But then I started to think about it.
Why wouldn't I move? I like my city, I had visited others, but I had never been compelled to relocate for a job or a significant other or family. So I never went looking to improve my geographic relevance. I never questioned the weather's role as a governing character in my life charade. (I have a resounding memory of comprehending that people only talk about the weather if they are not clever enough to talk about anything else; however, as an adult I came to understand that where I live the weather is a defining factor in the blueprint of any day). Really, I like where I live. I like the moody weather and the spare golden months of the year when t-shirts are nearly sufficient enough in the evenings.
I don't love how the flood of transplanting citizens drives up the cost of living and the proliferation of part-time job opportunities replaces the full-time ones. I'm pretty disturbed that anyone finds it somewhat glorious that young people come here to retire. It's too easy to get distracted by all the work of each day to even notice why people keep coming here, moving here, and creating this expensive mayhem.
And yet.
No matter how much you like your home, getting away has a therapeutic value all its own. It's almost negligible where one goes, getting away. Because when you get away, you also get to come home. And coming home, no matter how many people have raced you there in your absence, is often the best part of going away.
Three winters ago, in Boston between big snowstorms, I was asked if I ever considered moving away. Retrospectively, it was a Big question, not a superficial query, but that's hindsight for you.
The city in which I live is growing at an astronomical rate that drove up the housing market, rent and makes it highly unusual to meet someone here who isn't from somewhere else.
I'm a rare breed, a native.
My city is a Best Place for sustainability, retirement, bicycling, parks system, livability, and a zillion more things that make people keep wanting to move here. We're still an outpost of affordability to those coming from other places. Of course several factors influence a big move, and in my case it is made even more complicated by having kids and they have a dad. So without having seriously considered it previously, my answer proved to be a simple as well as a definite No.
But then I started to think about it.
Why wouldn't I move? I like my city, I had visited others, but I had never been compelled to relocate for a job or a significant other or family. So I never went looking to improve my geographic relevance. I never questioned the weather's role as a governing character in my life charade. (I have a resounding memory of comprehending that people only talk about the weather if they are not clever enough to talk about anything else; however, as an adult I came to understand that where I live the weather is a defining factor in the blueprint of any day). Really, I like where I live. I like the moody weather and the spare golden months of the year when t-shirts are nearly sufficient enough in the evenings.
I don't love how the flood of transplanting citizens drives up the cost of living and the proliferation of part-time job opportunities replaces the full-time ones. I'm pretty disturbed that anyone finds it somewhat glorious that young people come here to retire. It's too easy to get distracted by all the work of each day to even notice why people keep coming here, moving here, and creating this expensive mayhem.
And yet.
No matter how much you like your home, getting away has a therapeutic value all its own. It's almost negligible where one goes, getting away. Because when you get away, you also get to come home. And coming home, no matter how many people have raced you there in your absence, is often the best part of going away.
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