I was this close to telling you what the Top Secret Plans are. I just wrote half an entry explaining everything and laying it all out and getting into all the work Iāve done over the past eighteen months and how yesterday I received some very disappointing news about the Plans. I was going to ask for the help of the internet to make the Plans happen, and I was going to give up the little silly dream of announcing on this journal, with much fanfare, that the Plans have come to pass! just because I am so tired and discouraged about the Plans right now.
Yesterday I got this email saying, basically, that the Plans could be delayed by three years. All the work and effort and money and time and thought Iāve put into the Plans, well, thatās all fine and good, but I may just have to wait to do them the way I want to do them. In fact I may not be able to do them at all. I donāt know yet. I got the email yesterday and saw the words āJuly 2006ā and āone to two year long processā and I couldnāt even really understand what that meant. Three years? How did I miss the fact, after all the calling and emailing and researching and discussing and pondering, how was I so completely unprepared? I just sort of stared at the screen and then replied, asking for confirmation that, really, this will take three years? And the answer I received back, very quickly, since apparently this organization has decided to become the model of expedited efficiency in the last week, even though I have been calling and emailing them for months without answerā¦anyway, the answer was āOh, Iām sorry, did we say a one-to-two-year waiting period? No, thatās completely wrong. I meant a one-to-two-year waiting period if youāre lucky. And I just put the email in its appropriate folder and went to an herbal soapmaking class with some girls from my work and made a thing of lemon-lime scented glycerin soap with some plastic lizards embedded therein. I can still hardly think about it, even though I have to start not only thinking about but acting upon this information as soon as possible, like, today.
All is, not, Iām happy to say, completely lost at this point. There is a Plan B. There is a Plan C. There may potentially be a Plan D or E or whatever the hell, but I donāt know yet. I have to check, I have to see, I have to find out. What I do know is that itās getting harder and harder to keep motivated to make the Plans happenā¦after all this time spent thinking about them and trying to make them happen, Iāve received very little feedback or support. I had one very positive development occur a couple of months ago, and then my Plans-related trip to New York went pretty well, and that was encouraging. But there have been long stretches of days and weeks and months where I kept trying to research and figure out and take into consideration, and nothing happened. No one returned my calls or my emails, and all of a sudden another week would have gone by, andā¦nothing. Now itās August, now itās September. Now itās October and soon it will be 2006 and will I have completely wasted 2005? I canāt tell, I donāt know.
Three years. Where were you three years ago? Where will you be three years from now, do you know? How do you know? Three years ago this week my friends Rob and Anna came to visit for a weekend, and I met Omar and Monty. I had been working at my old job for a couple of months and was still getting used to being employed, having to go into work every single day. I was smack in the middle of a relationship with someone who didnāt love me and couldnāt tell me he didnāt love me, and I was thinking about that a lot. Iād cut my hair from its previous hippie length to a more manageable and slightly less split-endy shoulder-blade length, and Iād been doing this crazy online journal thing for about ten months. I had about ten readers at the time. I was just sort of doodling alongā¦Iād graduated from social work school but wasnāt able to get a real social work job, and I think I was just sort of marking time, the way we all do, or a lot of us anyway, for long stretches of our lives.
If youād told me then what Iād be doing in three years, I would not have believed that Iād leave that relationship, that Iād cut my hair off, that all my friends would have babies, that Iād live in two different houses in two years, that Iād go to Europe twice in one year, that Iād finally make it to the intermediate bellydance class, that Iād meet and become friends with people Iād get to know from the journal, that I would make a fantastic octopus plate. How could I know those things? How could I have planned then for what Iām doing now, for what Iām trying to be now? When I thought the plans would happen next year I could easily think three years aheadā¦but I donāt know if I can think about the next three years just staying where I am, doing what Iām doing. I love my city and my friends and my very fun weekends, but I donāt know. Another three years. If I have lost some motivation now I canāt imagine that I will be able to keep it up for three years. I canāt even imagine myself at thirty-three but I can imagine how three years can just sort of go by without my much noticingā¦and I donāt want to do that anymore. I want to do something bigger and ostensibly more exciting. I want to do the Plans.
So today and this weekend Iāll do some more research and make some more calls and write some more email. I donāt know if any of that will make much difference or if I will have to completely reshape the way I think about the next couple of years. Iām going to keep the Plans a halfway secret a little while longer, I thinkā¦mostly because of my magical thinking that believes that if I donāt tell the internet then I still have a chance to make them happen. I may crack soon, though. I may just give up.