what's up friday
Last Friday, my dad and I moved into our new apartment in West Norriton, PA.
Things I like:
-totally awesome kitchen!
-sweet balcony that I can plant stuff on
-my own room, with nice view of trees
-my own bathroom, with full shower and great acoustics
-I get the place to myself most of the time since my dad is hardly ever here
Things that are challenging:
-the enormous TV, on which my dad likes to watch Fox News every night
-hard to afford the food I want, to make full use of the kitchen
-inconveniently located; I have to drive quite a ways to get anywhere, and there's often a lot of obnoxious traffic
-bedroom and bathroom both have two doors (one which they share). rooms with two doors freak me out.
Learning experiences:
-I'm getting into better habits about keeping things (especially the kitchen) tidy
-I have plenty of time for my writing and other creative projects; I just need to actually use the time that way
-Dad and I are doing pretty well at getting along and respecting each other's space as well as enjoying each other's company
Last weekend, I took part in a totally awesome performance art workshop called Our Weddings. It started out as a play that a group of people about my age were sharing, and I heard about it from a friend who was a member of the original cast. I'd been promising her I'd go see it for quite some time, and when I saw her post on Facebook that it was the last chance there would be to see the show, and that there would be a free workshop that whole weekend around the performance, I cleared my whole fucking calendar so I could join.
It was an AMAZING experience. I am so glad I made the time and space for it. It was a bit challenging to be the ONLY person-likely-to-be-identified-as-male in the room, especially as someone who doesn't actually identify as male, but I didn't feel like that significantly inhibited my engagement. We all stretched ourselves in a lot of ways. One thing that really stood out for me about the experience was that, even though most of us did not know most of the other people in the group, we all just really TRUSTED each other. We didn't articulate a lot of rules or expectations. We just showed up, trusted each other, and in a couple instances when people's needs were not met we communicated with each other about how to better meet those needs. I watched myself as well as others make choices both to push ourselves to try things that might have been somewhat uncomfortable and to say "no" when something was beyond what we could safely push ourselves to do. I made a lot of really awesome new friends. It felt very much like something I would want to do more, and I plan to be intentional about maintaining contact with many of the people that I met!
The rest of the week was pretty uneventful. Dad and I went out for dinner on Monday. We learned that we have very different responses to heavy rain - I don't like to drive in it but it doesn't bother me to be outside and get wet; whereas he has no problem driving in it as long as he doesn't himself get wet. We had an interesting time navigating how to communicate with the waiter at the Chinese restaurant, who had trouble understanding the "vegetarian" concept, without offending him or other employees by criticizing his English capability. On Tuesday we resumed our ongoing activity of me trying to teach him to play Settlers of Catan without tripping his frustration switch too much. Wednesday, I went to a party at Kody and Shani's which was fun, though a little out of alignment with my expectations as I was thinking it would be a "board games party", but everyone got tired of board games long before I did, so we stopped the game we had started in the middle and had a long conversation which I could only describe as "geeking out about child development", a topic of interest to everyone in the room (all teachers and/or parents and/or regular caregivers for small children) except me (none of the above). It was nice to hang out with my friends, though.
Yesterday, Thursday...I didn't really feel like I did anything particularly notable. Our last session of the World Changing Writing Workshop was yesterday, and that was pretty awesome, although sad that it was the last session. My commitment to myself, upon completion of the course, is that I'm going to make time and space for both private and public writing EVERY DAY, and that I'm going to set up accountability systems for doing that. I'm working on exactly how those things are going to manifest, but that's what's going on as far as my writing, and this is my sort-of public statement about that. I'm posting on LJ right now because I haven't yet moved to a more permanent new space, but you can anticipate a move soon. (Whoever "you" are, since I don't really think there are that many of you who are really still following this LJ and aren't also following me on Facebook, which is where the majority of my life updates have been posted for quite some time now.)
This weekend, I'm excited to be heading back to Pendle Hill for a poetry workshop retreat. I saved up my pennies to be able to do this and I'm really looking forward to it. I'll let you know how it goes!
11 things i’m grateful for today:
1. I have a place to live!
2. I can go to the poetry workshop!
3. I’m going to get a new Tarot deck, as soon as I decide on which one!
4. I have time and space for writing!
5. I got to do the World Changing Writing Workshop!
6. People helped me fix up my OKCupid profile last night!
7. I’ve made some cool new friends this week!
8. I got to hang out with some old friends too!
9. My dad and I are getting along pretty well!
10. Kale!
11. I’m not entirely broke!
(1079)
Things I like:
-totally awesome kitchen!
-sweet balcony that I can plant stuff on
-my own room, with nice view of trees
-my own bathroom, with full shower and great acoustics
-I get the place to myself most of the time since my dad is hardly ever here
Things that are challenging:
-the enormous TV, on which my dad likes to watch Fox News every night
-hard to afford the food I want, to make full use of the kitchen
-inconveniently located; I have to drive quite a ways to get anywhere, and there's often a lot of obnoxious traffic
-bedroom and bathroom both have two doors (one which they share). rooms with two doors freak me out.
Learning experiences:
-I'm getting into better habits about keeping things (especially the kitchen) tidy
-I have plenty of time for my writing and other creative projects; I just need to actually use the time that way
-Dad and I are doing pretty well at getting along and respecting each other's space as well as enjoying each other's company
Last weekend, I took part in a totally awesome performance art workshop called Our Weddings. It started out as a play that a group of people about my age were sharing, and I heard about it from a friend who was a member of the original cast. I'd been promising her I'd go see it for quite some time, and when I saw her post on Facebook that it was the last chance there would be to see the show, and that there would be a free workshop that whole weekend around the performance, I cleared my whole fucking calendar so I could join.
It was an AMAZING experience. I am so glad I made the time and space for it. It was a bit challenging to be the ONLY person-likely-to-be-identified-as-male in the room, especially as someone who doesn't actually identify as male, but I didn't feel like that significantly inhibited my engagement. We all stretched ourselves in a lot of ways. One thing that really stood out for me about the experience was that, even though most of us did not know most of the other people in the group, we all just really TRUSTED each other. We didn't articulate a lot of rules or expectations. We just showed up, trusted each other, and in a couple instances when people's needs were not met we communicated with each other about how to better meet those needs. I watched myself as well as others make choices both to push ourselves to try things that might have been somewhat uncomfortable and to say "no" when something was beyond what we could safely push ourselves to do. I made a lot of really awesome new friends. It felt very much like something I would want to do more, and I plan to be intentional about maintaining contact with many of the people that I met!
The rest of the week was pretty uneventful. Dad and I went out for dinner on Monday. We learned that we have very different responses to heavy rain - I don't like to drive in it but it doesn't bother me to be outside and get wet; whereas he has no problem driving in it as long as he doesn't himself get wet. We had an interesting time navigating how to communicate with the waiter at the Chinese restaurant, who had trouble understanding the "vegetarian" concept, without offending him or other employees by criticizing his English capability. On Tuesday we resumed our ongoing activity of me trying to teach him to play Settlers of Catan without tripping his frustration switch too much. Wednesday, I went to a party at Kody and Shani's which was fun, though a little out of alignment with my expectations as I was thinking it would be a "board games party", but everyone got tired of board games long before I did, so we stopped the game we had started in the middle and had a long conversation which I could only describe as "geeking out about child development", a topic of interest to everyone in the room (all teachers and/or parents and/or regular caregivers for small children) except me (none of the above). It was nice to hang out with my friends, though.
Yesterday, Thursday...I didn't really feel like I did anything particularly notable. Our last session of the World Changing Writing Workshop was yesterday, and that was pretty awesome, although sad that it was the last session. My commitment to myself, upon completion of the course, is that I'm going to make time and space for both private and public writing EVERY DAY, and that I'm going to set up accountability systems for doing that. I'm working on exactly how those things are going to manifest, but that's what's going on as far as my writing, and this is my sort-of public statement about that. I'm posting on LJ right now because I haven't yet moved to a more permanent new space, but you can anticipate a move soon. (Whoever "you" are, since I don't really think there are that many of you who are really still following this LJ and aren't also following me on Facebook, which is where the majority of my life updates have been posted for quite some time now.)
This weekend, I'm excited to be heading back to Pendle Hill for a poetry workshop retreat. I saved up my pennies to be able to do this and I'm really looking forward to it. I'll let you know how it goes!
11 things i’m grateful for today:
1. I have a place to live!
2. I can go to the poetry workshop!
3. I’m going to get a new Tarot deck, as soon as I decide on which one!
4. I have time and space for writing!
5. I got to do the World Changing Writing Workshop!
6. People helped me fix up my OKCupid profile last night!
7. I’ve made some cool new friends this week!
8. I got to hang out with some old friends too!
9. My dad and I are getting along pretty well!
10. Kale!
11. I’m not entirely broke!
(1079)