Stopping

"Most stories have a hero who finds
You make your past your past."


-- Joshua Radin, "Brand New Day"


--


Once you leave school, yearly calendars revert to what they were before schools imposed vacations on them. There is no "summer" except for the change in temperature and your monthly electric bill. I'm starting to learn that. I think that's one of the reasons so many people get depressed in the years after they leave college. That, and getting older and working and not drinking as much and stuff.


Another result of no longer living in a "school year" is that there are beginnings and endings randomly placed throughout the months. For example, it's mid-July and one friend of mine just started a new job, and in two days another friend leaves his job, and in seven weeks, I'm leaving my current job. And we're all moving at different times, too. When I go to restaurants and see teenagers working their "summer job," I have to remember what that was like. To work at a place knowing it was temporary, knowing your identity didn't necessarily have to be tied to this organization in any way, knowing that there were things in the system that you'd do differently but that there wasn't enough time to bother.


Granted, not all teens leave their summer jobs in the fall, but most do.


It's different now, and I don't need to say why. Knowing that if you wanted to, you could slip into complacency. You could be like the person upstairs at the corner office, working in middle-management because they were ambitious when they got here but not enough to jump ladders for a better position somewhere else, or maybe they married a local, or maybe "the right time never came."


I guess that's all some people want in life, but I never want people to say or think that of me. I think that's what people originally meant by saying that someone was "going places."


--


When I was in Omaha last week, my sister and I talked about what it was like to come back after being away for so long. My sister said she feels vindicated every time she runs into an old classmate whose life has fallen to shambles in the last two years--not that she relishes their misfortune, but that she just knows in those moments that she made good decisions. It makes her feel better about being in the Navy, a state of being which gives her a lot of grief.


I'll be honest--I feel good, too. It makes me feel better about moving back home, because it's my choice to do so.


I think a lot of people know they live in a free country but don't live free lives. They don't go places. They don't save their money so they can do good things or have good times. They either see their families too much or too little. They don't know the good places to eat in their own town, and they don't read books or go on walks. They don't escape sadness.


--


Now that I'm back, I'm back in The Nerd rehearsals, which have been going for a few weeks now. We blocked some of my character's big scenes last night, and it was the first chance I've gotten to play with the other cast members.


I can definitely tell they've spent some time gelling while I was gone. It's hard to put anything into Jell-O once it's set, and I spent most of my breaks reading quietly just because I don't want to be the guy who thinks he knows what everyone's talking about.


I'm not shut out, though. Theatre people are naturally warm, welcoming folks. They smile a lot and tend to reference movies that we all have seen.


It's a mix of feeling incredibly young (most everyone else has "retired" from acting at least once) and inexperienced. Like I'm relearning how to act. Which might be a good thing. I imagine the ability to reboot each time a rehearsal process begins is useful.


But as I told a friend today, even though The Nerd is no masterpiece, it's still nice to work on a play of substance. On material instead of bits, on action instead of mere business, on lines that don't come from the back-issues of my childhood. It's been two years since I've had the sense that I was "creating a role," instead of trying to fit myself into the cookie cutter. It's nice.


--


Contrast that to this morning: I entered the summer camp also in medias res, trying to figure out where, in the midst of juggling and scenes and an ever-changing schedule, I fit in this year. What do I teach? Who do I work with? What do we work on? When?


It's mildly controlled chaos. I don't want to badmouth anyone in my organization. But everyone's a bit clueless about what is supposed to be going on. Or maybe they just suppose what is going on. I also don't want to complain too much about being back at work, because who doesn't want to complain when you've been on vacation for two weeks?


Long and short: I'm not convinced that there's any real point in me being there for five hours of my day.


--


I think it has a lot to do with what I mentioned before, that I'm leaving in seven weeks at the end of August. That's too short a time for any long-term projects of real merit, but it's also too long to have anything culminate during the camp.


This is exactly why I didn't want to give anyone my notice back in April.


I'm leaving soon. This simple fact underlies everything I do for the next seven weeks. I keep preparing myself for a climax, only to find that I've somehow ended up in the dénouement.


--


It's raining today. I drove to the office in the afternoon, during the worst of the storm, and when I passed a semi I noticed that the truck slowed down considerably. Of course, it's because big trucks like that need more time to stop, more space to slow their momentum.


The process of stopping is just that--a process. It can't happen instantaneously.


The problem is, when your foot's on the break, there's not much else you can do.