one day this kid

It’s been a while. I came back on here with a sense of having nothing better to do, as I’m sitting in a worthless class that I am enrolled in and barely giving the bare minimum to in order to bridge this one last step to getting my Bachelor’s degree. And it’s a sad and kind of sobering feeling to realize the passivity that I am approaching this last step of my academic career, but I’m learning to see that I don’t need to give everything my all and to be so… not aggressive, but active in my life, because I have realize there is a limit to the amount of labor I can give. Anyway. I’m here. And I’m speaking into the void, which is really common with blogging, I think. But something as trivial and choosingly mindless can be honest, too.

I’ve been attempting to catch up with friends that have fallen out of my immediate life, in a mutual attempt to remedy our neglect (or rather, our choices and veering life paths), and it’s been daunting to say the least to try and sum up what I have been doing this year, in a way to describe myself as anything other than a sloth (because emotional labor is not regarded as higher importance — I am guilty of this too). I’ve been getting steady work in theatre, especially without a conservatory program to rely on, and have been busy with academics and working to get a job that is probably not going to come through, and looking for more and more opportunities. And I’m trying to get all praxis (a word that I recently uncovered the meaning of, thanks to a dear friend [just realized how horrible sarcastic that sounded and I do not mean that at all], meaning theory and practice coming together) and wanting to not view my life in a progress narrative… because progress is looked at as linear and with an end, and I don’t want my life to be like that. I want my life to be an infinite multitude of different paths and options and schematic potential that will not help me create who I am ‘meant’ to be, but create different overlapping facets of myself that will ultimately just help me express the infinity that I am, and that we all are.

So. I’m doing a show a quarter. I’m running a performance group. I’m working. I’m finishing school. This is what I tell people, because this is how we all mutually accept an interpretive retelling of cumulative activity, in a way that actually has very little interpretation.

Great.

And I want to say more. We all do. Because “How are you?” has some of the most potential because we hear it all the time, but it’s also the most limiting — if you say anything other than exactly (or a variation of) “I’m good, how are you?” then it’s uncomfortable. Because honesty is also emotional labor, and we are all tired from the grind. And you don’t want to connect with everyone because that is also emotional labor that is more labor that people don’t want to put in anymore. And you can’t really blame anyone for this.

So, we keep going. And we keep it in. And we try to connect with a few people. And not to get all problematically neoliberal, but we are our own people at the end of the day. This mess that is our bodies and our minds.

And now that I’m here, I don’t know where I’m going with this anymore. But, I guess I am just trying to explain technological absence to no one in particular. And I guess that I would like to ask “How are you?”, because I really do want to hear you, and for you to know that I mean it when I want to present that option of honesty and vulnerability, but will absolutely understand if you don’t want to take that path. Either way, I hope you’re okay, but that it’s also cool with me if you’re not.

-t.