Sequestration and Denial

What I really need to do now is to identify all the things I really don't need and then get rid of them.

Really.  What do you actually need?

I get up in the morning and use my toiletries...I'll spare you the details.
I grab something really quick to eat...not cooked...
When I leave I have some kind of bag with my computer.
Go to work using my car, and once there I need coffee.  (This work stuff will be replaced by going to school, but it should look pretty much the same.)
Eat lunch, which I may have brought and is usually stored or packaged in something disposable.
After work I go home.
Walk...need clothes for some kind of exercise...which I do less frequently than I should.
Rehearsal...uses my computer and whatever printed stuff comes with the show.
No rehearsal...reading books from the library or on my iPad from the library...in my chair.
Dinner if at home is rarely at the table...which may not be good but it's what it is.
Sometimes I sit in the chair on the balcony and enjoy the outdoors.
I use the internet at home.
Golf in the summer.
Travel sometimes....sometimes its camping.

I have a house full of stuff that I mean to use, that I want to use, that I may have used once...but really, all I need is the stuff to do the things above.

Wanna buy some stuff?

Because a lot of the stuff you have is there because you think you should have it, not because you use it or need it.  I have a piano and a guitar...I like using them, but I don't.  I have a tv...but I really don't use it.  I have an ironing board...well, you get the idea.

But I want to use these things.  I think I should use these things. 

What are the things that you own and don't use?  I bet there's a lot of them.  And you keep them because you might use them some day...and pretty soon you think you need a 2,500 sf house to keep all the stuff that you might use because you should.  It's a kind of denial.

Not that a big house isn't nice.  Space is nice.  It's a luxury.  It's luxurious.  I wouldn't mind having space, but it would be nice for it to be more spacious because there was less in it.

Our stuff also provides some of our sense of identity.  When someone comes into my home, they can see who I am (or who I wish to be) by looking at all the stuff that is in my home.  When I move through my home my sense of who I am is reinforced...by the bookshelves and the art and the clutter.  All of it defines me in a way that is comforting.  If it were all gone, would I notice?  I think so.

Now to find the balance.  How much stuff do I need to have in order to have an identity while still clearing enough space to have a sleeker life?

The Cognitive Dissonance of Certainty

A destination has been identified:  Minnesota State University Mankato

This is a school that I have been promoting to my potential BFA students for several years.  Although its a small program, they produce a ton of theater and the work is varied and high quality.  I've enjoyed the shows I've seen there and my students who have gone there have had very successful experiences.  I'll learn a ton there and have oodles of opportunity to reflect, focus and build the toolbox.

That being said, it's definitely not a warmer place to land.  Definite drawback.  ;-)

The story of how I am landing there is kind of a long one, and really follows the backbone of my decision making in pursuing an MFA in Directing in the first place.  Some of it is probably in earlier posts, maybe, but I'll make some attempt to put it all together in the next few days.  Meanwhile, here's some random reactions in the short run.

So, referring back to the two possible paths, it looks like this will be primarily the MFA Directing Sabbatical rather than the Kerouac Sabbatical.  This is, frankly, a bit of a surprise.  It's a crazy competitive world out there and getting a slot anywhere was pretty much a long shot. 

So now comes the reality of a life change...which is considerably different than the fantasy of a life change.  Despite all the various moments that I have had this past nine months during which I could reflect on what this could look like and what I might do with it, or what I was thinking while it approached, that period of anticipation is quickly coming to a close and now comes the cold hard reality of decisions made and buyer's remorse.

Suddenly I have to rent my townhouse, find a new place to live, put together a budget, cancel everything that costs money (because the budget is simple...you are going to be poor), pack...what to sell?  What to put in storage?  What to take with? 

Anticipation and fantasy was so much more convenient. 

Psychologically, buyer's remorse makes perfect sense. A consumer switches from one state to another when making a purchase, where the state before they've made the purchase has enormous positive influence, and the purchase afterward loses a great deal of that. Before making a purchase, a buyer is faced with a great deal of choices, giving them a sense of agency and power in the world. They have money or credit to spend, and get to exert their dominance over the marketplace by placing their purchasing power.
 After the purchase, however, all options have vanished. Buyer's remorse may set in as they see themselves locked into a single decision, which may or may not have been the best, and seek their purchasing power reduced. No longer acting from a position of control, many people react by seeking to distance themselves from the purchasing act, to reaffirm their sense of having had a wide field of choices. Buyer's remorse is, in this way, seen as a very simple state of cognitive dissonance, where the desire to retain complete control and infinite possibilities clashes with the reality of actually exerting that control by limiting those possibilities. (wisegeek.com)

I like the idea that this is all about a new state of cognitive dissonance.  The sense of control and power is still there.  I decided to leave my current job.  I decided to go back to school.  I decided that theater was my main love.  I decided to take the offer from Mankato (and not wait for other possible outcomes).  I decided to do this...but at the same time...now I am committed.  I have things I MUST do now.  Last week I could do anything I wanted.

I'm feeling very petulant these days.

On Being Mentored

Here's a snippet of thought that I think I'll just post as is.  It was drafted sometime last fall...

I had a meeting today during which I was reminded how valuable it is to be working within a structure or under the guidance of folks who have a vision and a passion for what they do.  It's not easy to sustain passion for the things you do without that leadership.  It's one thing to be a leader and that's great, but its sometimes even more valuable to be led.

And that leadership can come in unexpected ways.  In this meeting today I found myself ranting a bit about curriculum mapping.  It's an important part of education but the specifics don't matter, what matters is being able to get excited about something and have someone in the room say, "Yes!" and get it and support it and share a vision and have the situational authority to help make something happen.

Ack!  What the hell am I talking about?  When you get up in the morning and you head out to do the things that are important to you are you alone?  Do you walk down the sidewalk thinking, "Yes, I'll do that!"  and when you do is there someone to say, "Yes, do that!"

Do that.  Get your shit together.  Make a difference.  Be passionate.

I've gotten a bunch of useful mentoring in the past few years from Sam Tanner.  He's a wacky educator who believes in students to the exclusion of just about everything else and he continually reminds me that there is a passion in the room that must be leveraged in order for learning (or art) to happen.

And without that leadership, or mentoring, things seem to fizzle about.

And collaboration.  These things all go together...leadership, mentoring, collaboration...this is one of those thoughts without form.

Backing up, so I'm going into this meeting and I've got a notepad but nothing else and I haven't prepared anything because it's a just a sharing of ideas or a discussion of history or something.

Not sure...saving for later.

The Sabbatical: Day 237

Sitting at the Westin in Chicago after two interviews and waiting for a third.  What an interesting week.

Perhaps the best sign today is that people keep complimenting me on my tie.  I'm pretty sure that's a good sign.  No one complimented my tie on Wednesday, the day of the Brown interview.  Same tie.
Different day.  Very different vibe.

Have enjoyed chatting with other MFA Directing candidates today.  Random conversations in lobbys and hallways...one guy who had been at the Brown interviews on Wednesday shared that he too thought that it was a disaster of an interview...perhaps that's the strategy Brian uses to see how folks respond...though he didn't close this guys folder and talk about alternatives to grad school!  ha!  There were about fourty of us today in the opening orientation.  Once again, this is crazy competitive.

Had a great interview with the University of Iowa rep, Eric Forsythe.  Nice guy.  Good conversation.  Thank you Brown for having helped me craft my message a little more clearly.  I'm pretty excited about Iowa as an option.  Lots of good hands on experience, strong creative environment with the connection to the Iowa Writer's Workshop...and Iowa City is supposed to be a nice place.  It felt like I would be a good fit.  Also they take four folks and only accept candidates every three years, which is a nice model.

The Florida State interview went well and was preceded by waiting in the hallway listening to some enthusiastic woman having a really noisy climax in a nearby room.  Very strange.  The interview itself was a bit odd in that the program head was still in Florida and was participating through skype.  It actually worked quite well and while it was a short interview, they seemed like a nice program.  They do a two tier interview process, bringing six down to Tallahassee and then selecting three from that six. They didn't seem to have a lot of questions for me, so I'm not sure I'm a strong candidate there.

So now I'm waiting for a 2:00 interview with Indiana and then back to the road to drive home.  Its snowing out, so hopefully the roads will be just wet.

One of the things that was cool out of the Brown interview was the idea that we spend certain parts of our lives pursuing the answer to a question.  Brian noted that ten years was about the life span of any given question, which was an interesting observation given how my own experience has gone.  I spent about ten years exploring how you create a healthy, successful business, to which I found some answers though mostly by not doing so; and then about ten years exploring how you create a healthy, successful classroom...and found more success there as I found answers; and now I feel ready to spend a decade exploring the question of how to be a successful and effective director.  Obviously there are lots of subquestions within all of these larger questions, but they definitely help define those parts of my life.  And looking even further back, the big question that I was trying to explore before that was not the question, what do I want to do, but rather the even larger question, what makes me happy?  Of course, that is a question that I have continued to interrogate throughout my life, but it was a more immediate and compelling question in those years from 18 to 28.

It's a cool way to dice up a life.  Even if you don't make the kind of large career changes that I have made, I would still expect that different phases of one's life could be encapsulated by identifying the large question being pursued in each of those phases.  Change is constant, but also happens within the context of larger trends, patterns and arcs.

Hurray for free internet.  Just saying.

It's snowing harder.  The Indiana interview better be worth it.

More later.  Have a day!