I'm still alive

It’s been a while. I’ve been planning to update for forever, but have been lazy and busy. More busy I think, but whatever. I think updating here is good for me and I should do it more. It’s cathartic—I think through things as I type and usually learn something about myself in the process. It’s a good way of processing everything. And it keeps you lovely people on top of my life.

Can we start by saying: God is incredible. He has continued to provide for me more incredibly that I could ever have imagined or asked for. He gave me my job at the frame shop, which I really enjoy, more so than almost anyone I know likes their day job. I started praying in December that He would bring me another show at some point, and a couple days before Christmas He brought me a new show at the Metropolitan! Also more assisting work for Jon, the designer I assisted in the fall. Last week I did a lot of model building for him for a show that he was assisting on. He was very complimentary of my work, and I really enjoyed doing it.

The biggest and most recently amazing example of God’s provision, however, is my housing situation. My current sublet was through Feb 1, so ever since I got back from Christmas I’ve been looking for a new place to move to. I’ve visited a couple, but nothing really seemed like a perfect fit. Through a long series of events, though, it turns out that I get to stay here through the end of May! I am so grateful and excited. I love my room, I love my roommate, I love my neighborhood. I get tons of space for a fantastic price. It’s exactly what I need right now and God was so good to work it out for me to stay. In May there is a possibility that I’ll be signing on to the lease, or I may end up moving elsewhere. God will arrange all that, too. Right now, though, I am so psyched that I don’t have to move.

A couple weeks ago I took a trip down to Williamsburg to visit Sinfonicron during its build period. I took the bus to Baltimore after work on a Monday night, slept at Christy’s house, and we left at 615am and drove down. We arrived around 10am and wandered the halls of PBK saying hello to friends. We spent most of the afternoon talking to Dave and Matt, which was fantastic, and hanging out onstage and in the shop. That night we got dinner with Matt, Dave, Will, Rachel, and Meg, at one of our favorite Mexican joints. We stayed the night at Meg’s new house, and had lunch at Nawab and an Alexander Technique session with Joan, the department chair, on Wednesday. We left town at 4pm to get me to my bus in Baltimore to get me back to the city around midnight.

It was so good to see everyone again. I loved spending time with Christy again, in the car both ways, catching up and just discussing things. Got to spend quality time with Meg and see her house and meet her pets and roommate, which was great. Got to spend time with Matt, which was wonderful, as I consider him my mentor and partial life coach. I hadn’t seen him since August when he left me in the city to finish his show. It was great to update him on everything that’s happened since and get his reactions and advice on things. He got his fill of teasing me, of course: the first thing he did after giving me a hello hug was to comment on the new metal in my face and go to find the biggest magnet he could to see if it would stick to my eyebrow ring. Luckily for me it’s stainless steel and not magnetic. :-P He gave me good advice about continuing to build my career up here, and we’re in talks about me maybe doing some work for him over the summer.

It was a weird, though; this trip made me realize how much I have changed since August. I love Matt’s advice and always listen to it and usually agree with it, but this time I realized very distinctly that I am not Matt and that I approach life in a very different way. He is very much the self-made type and worked incredibly hard for the success that he had when he was in the city. He kept advising me that I needed to keep pushing and contacting people and putting myself out there. Which is true in one sense. But on another level, not at all true. I realized that my career will be very different from Matt’s because I’m not the one running it; God is. My job is to do my best and trust Him for the results and to care more about being where He wants me than about succeeding on a worldly level. I still have every intention of working as hard as I can and I hope I succeed, but that is not my main point.

I was exhausted when I finally got back to the city late Wednesday night. It had snowed (my bus almost got cancelled!), but I dragged myself to the subway and rode home, just trying to stay awake long enough to make it there. Right after I got off the train I realized that my cell phone had slipped out of my pocket and disappeared. Try as I might the next day, I couldn’t find it, it was gone. So I went cell-phone-less for two days, in the process discovering that I am way too attached to my phone and feel naked without it. Eventually I made it to a Verizon store and got a fancy schmancy new blackberry to replace it. All my contacts on my old phone were lost, but I’m slowly building them back up. And I like the new phone a lot. It’s very sleek and it’s great to have access to my email and the internet while I’m at work or around town. I need to be more accessible for design work, so it’s nice to have a smartphone.

Work has been going well, overall. We were really slow for a bit, but things are picking back up now. Have had lots of fun with coworkers this past week, it’s been good. Today was weird and crazy: the morning was relaxed and fun and then in the afternoon I got really frazzled and out of it. I’m resting tonight so I’ll be fine tomorrow.

In the spirit of Remus, I will now describe my recent cooking adventures. A couple weeks ago I made picadillo, which was incredible. Although I burned 2 pots of rice in the process, which I never do. I’ve decided our stove is weird or something. To go with the picadillo I made fried plantains, which are readily available at my grocery. They were delicious. I fried them in butter and ate them with the picadillo. I have since fried them and eaten them plain or sprinkled with parmesan cheese. Very delicious. Last week it was spaghetti with chorizo in a basil tomato sauce. Also very good, the chorizo was a nice change. This week I made poppy seed chicken without the poppy seeds. My grocery doesn’t sell them (crazy, right?) so I left them out. It’s still good. I also made a big batch of chocolate chip cookies with walnuts and took them to work on Thursday. They were very popular—I need to come up with more ideas of things to bake for my shop. Everyone is very appreciative and I like making their days a little better with the contribution of baked goods. Any suggestions?

I’ve been reading a lot, still. I reread The Great Gatsby, thoroughly enjoying it, read The Empty Space (one of the theatre books Melanie gave me for Christmas), also good, and today finished A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Next up is a book called Lighthousekeepers, which is a recommendation of my friend Sarah. She is reading the Hobbit and LOTR on my recommendation, so I’m reading her suggestions in return.

My recent obsession when I have a free minute is Gilmore Girls. An excellent TV show: it has heart and great characters that you love and identify with and excellent fast-paced witty dialogue. I started with Season 2 and now am almost done with Season 1. It’s great.

Musically speaking I just got into Kelley McRae. She’s a Brooklyn-based singer/songwriter, kind of folk in style. She performed a few songs at a Redeemer artists’ meeting that I was at last week and I was blown away. I now have her most recent CD and have been listening to it nonstop. I’ve also started Pandora stations of Passion Pit and The Kinks on coworkers’ recommendations. They’re ok, I’m giving them a chance and we’ll see what happens.

So Life is Good. Incredibly good. I feel so blessed and I’m very happy. I was telling my friend David the other day that I feel like I’m bipolar without the depression part. Just very very happy. Obviously things get hard sometimes, but I know that I’m where I’m supposed to be, I’m loving what I’m doing, and God is taking excellent care of me.