Last night I was at the old house to do yet some MORE cleaning up there so I can get my deposit back…which I am now not so sure is worth it anymore. I like money very much and I have many ideas on how to spend that deposit, but seriously all I did over the weekend was clean crown molding on my hands and knees and spackle up holes in the wall. It was somehow very tense and there was no way for me to play music for most of it (I didn’t think to bring the iPod). Not fun. I found myself fantasizing about buying a place of my own not a little, if only for the reason that I bought a place, I wouldn’t ever have to move again.
So I went over there to clean the toilet and take down some shower curtain rings that had slipped my mind Saturday and Sunday and there was some mail for me, one piece of which informed me that a major step in the realization of the Top Secret Plans. It was there on the floor; I picked it up and opened it in the bathroom, toilet brush in hand. “You’re good to go,” it sad, pretty much. “You’re all set at this end.”
I cleaned the toilet and threw away some trash and called my mom in Michigan and stretched and danced for two hours, crimping my face when asked to do a torso rotation in easel position, which, I am here to testify, is the hardest move I have ever tried to do and is one of multiple reasons I am not in a troupe. When I wasn’t cursing my inability to lift my chest diagonally, I was thinking about that letter. I kind of wanted to tell people in the class about it but kind of didn’t. Let me just sit on this, I thought. I’m not sure what it means yet.
Since the last time I wrote about the Top Secret Plans, I had come to the realization that since it was very possible they wouldn’t happen, due to circumstances beyond my control, I had better figure out a Plan B and possibly a Plan C to boot. I started getting kind of into it, last couple of months. Just yesterday I was looking at calendars and pricing things out and thinking happy thoughts about Plan B. I was pretty proud of myself for being flexible, like, Plan A didn’t work out? I AM SO AHEAD OF THE GAME. The Top Secret Plans have seemed very remote as of late, and I won’t lie to you, I was getting to a point where I was starting to think that maybe I didn’t want to do the Plans anymore. The Plans are pedestrian and boring, I thought. Anyone could do the Plans, they’re not such a big deal. The Plans…Plan A, I mean…won’t stretch or grow or change me the way Plans B or C might. What was I thinking, spending all that time and money on the Plans? Better to forget them, dismiss them ruefully, roll my eyes and laugh at myself for thinking grandiosely yet small-ly at the same time.
And it didn’t help matters that of the two big steps that needed to happen before I could think seriously about making a major life change and implementing the plans, one was pretty much completely out of my control, and the other was sort of in my control but involved…and still involves…a lot of weird family stuff that made me fall into a coma out of disgust and sorrow and annoyance. If the Plans don’t happen, I’d think to myself secretly, then I won’t have to deal with all this other stuff. I won’t have to make those calls and write those letters and transact that business. I can just do something else.
But now the first step, the first really big step, has happened. It’s been taken, not by me, but for me. Now if I want to make the Plans happen I do have to call and write and transact, I do have to weigh the pros and cons, I do have to make a big decision. The second step will or won’t happen based on what I do in the next couple of weeks, and I can’t tell you how great the pressure feels right now. I don’t want to make this decision; I want it made for me. I am so ashamed to write that.
One of the stories of my life, though, has been that I constantly sell myself short and don’t realize my potential, as my eighth-grade report card might have said. If I can do this, if I can manage it, it will be the bravest thing I’ve done in my adult life, which, sadly, isn’t saying much. Will I do it? How will I do it?