1 week down, 23 to go

Last week was very long. I spent 40 hours at the studio and am happy to say it got better every day. Monday was exhausting. David, the designer, was out of town teching a show so I was shown around by the rest of the studio. There’s 3 other people there full time: Rod and Amanda, David’s associate designers, and Sarah, the office administrator. Two days a week another girl named Sarah, who we call Mucks, comes in as well. The first day I spent entirely on the computer, something I hadn’t really done since college. My assignment was to build a model from the drafting of a past show, so I spent the day looking through all the drafting and then drafting my templates of what to cut out to build the model with. When I got home I was so tired that I went to bed at 10pm.

The rest of the week I pretty much worked on my model. I would send photos to David every night and he would write back with comments. I finished the first version after a couple days and Amanda critiqued it for me and gave suggestions and then I built it again. It was cool to have a second chance to change some of my methods, fix mistakes, and focus on getting faster.

The environment at the studio has proved to be a big adjustment. It’s basically the complete opposite of the frameshop: I sit most of the day, whereas at the shop I’m always on my feet and usually moving. We don’t talk much, because everyone is focused on their different jobs, whereas at the shop we talk constantly and laugh most of the day. There’s usually no music (though we did play some for a little one day, which was amazing), whereas at the shop we always have music going. And there’s only 4 of us, whereas at the shop there’s all my coworkers and then all the clients to interact with. And it’s in midtown, which is crowded and full of skyscrapers and people in suits, as opposed to Chelsea, which is much more relaxed and casual and artsy. It’s basically working in an office, which is something I’ve intentionally avoided for years. But I am adjusting. I missed the shop very much all week, but it bothered me less as the week went on.

A couple times I went out on errands, which I thoroughly enjoyed because it meant I got to move and be outside. I dropped some paperwork off at a job sight one day, and then moved a bunch of stuff down to our Brooklyn storage unit with Sarah another day.

Wednesday was small group, which was really good, and Thursday I talked with Remus for a long time, which was awesome. Saturday I went back to the frameshop. It was so good to go back. We were low on people because a few of them were out of town, but it was a good day anyway. I spent most of it working with David, which is always lots of fun. Laura arrived after work and we went to Chitos for dinner and then took a lovely walk through the Village. We came home around 10 and sat around talking until 2am. Sunday we got brunch in Chelsea, then I worked for 6 hours while she wandered around the city, then we took another lovely walk around Chelsea and the piers. We got an amazing Thai dinner and frozen yogurt as well, and continued wandering around until her train left around 915. It was so good to spend time with her—we had a ton of fun and lots of good conversation.

And this morning I went back to the studio. David’s still gone this week, and I’m continuing with my model building. I switched to model furniture today. I’m trying to plan friends activities because I was very lonely several evenings last week. Tomorrow night I’m hanging out with Stephanie, which will be awesome.

A side note of a curious coincidence in my life that I don’t think I can spend a whole post on but deserves noting: the preponderance of men in my life who are named David. It all started with Uncle David and David Sewall, but things really picked up once I got to college. There I dated a David, was really good friends with another David, and worked in the shop for a David. All of them were huge influences on me. Then I got to the city and one of my best friends here is a David, Susan Hilferty’s husband who has mentored me a little is a David, and now I’m interning for a David. If fact, of the guys I know, I almost feel like more of them are named David than aren’t. An odd coincidence, but I find it very amusing.

Hey it’s me again. After the overwhelming success of my last post (finally got a comment 6 days after posting), I’m going to grace you all with even more of my thoughts.

I was on the subway going to work on Saturday and was thinking about the internship and the change that’s happening in my life, and I suddenly got really happy about it. Extremely excited, and really happy. I’ve been a bit apprehensive because I feel like I’m being uprooted from my frameshop-and-small-shows-world that I’ve been building since August. I moved here and spent the past year making friends and building a comfortable and happy existence that was self-sufficient and enjoyable. It was slow growth but it was comfortable. And in the last couple months I finally felt like everything was where I wanted it to be. My friendships are growing well, I love the people I’m around, church is good, work is great. I finally had a routine. And now, all of a sudden, it’s all changing again.

But, though I’m still a little nervous, on the subway I realized how awesome that is. Comfort and routine is all well and good I suppose, but it doesn’t make you grow very much, it doesn't make you very alive. Now I get to start from scratch again, build up from the ground. New people and a new workplace with a huge learning curve staring me in the face. I can throw myself fully into this; I kind of visualize it as hurling my entire body against a wall to see what happens. And not in the sick and twisted way that that sounds, but in an excited and happy way. I get to really live and work my hardest. I’ve always loved challenges, and this is a big one. But it’s not as scary as it sounds: vestiges of the comfortable life I built are still definitely there. I now have a good support system up here, friends from small group, school, work, and theatre. I fully intend to rely heavily on them to get me through the internship.

It’s an opportunity to reinvent myself, to shake up my life again. I can drop the habits that I’ve formed as part of my routine more easily than I would if I stayed in it. I plan to start exercising again. I’m hoping to start running again, starting slow at small amounts twice a week and hopefully sticking with it and building up from there. Crunches will happen again, and pushups will continue. I hope to drink less coffee and less alcohol. That may be dreaming, but that’s the goal. J

I will have most of my evenings free now, so I’m going to work hard to schedule in my friends to make sure I keep my social life alive and therefore keep myself sane. I want to read more and remember how to enjoy the little things in life.

But best of all, this shakeup will make me depend more directly and immediately on God again. I’ll be a little closer to desperation on a daily basis, which is a good place to be when it comes to God. I’m looking forward to learning to rely on and trust Him more.

Lately

Wow. Don’t know what to say. Or where to start. And feel slightly lame for being overly dramatic about it. But hey, that’s the way I am.

So the last several weeks have been crazy and feel more like the last several decades. Things have been great and I’ve had a wonderful time, but it’s just been a lot going on. It would take way to long to talk about everything, and I doubt I still remember it all, so I’m just going to do highlights.

Picking up from where I left off, I did the scenic art for Alex’s show at the Metropolitan. It was called One Third of a Nation and was about the history of tenement buildings in New York. We played a lot with turning the space into the interior of a run down tenement building: there was lots of peeling wallpaper, water and mold damage, a broken down staircase, and dirt. I had a lot of fun playing with different effects and Alex paid me well. The show itself was incredible: beautifully staged and really really interesting. The theatre was awarded an OBIE a couple weeks ago for best off or off-off Broadway theatre this season, which is a really big deal. It was awarded for the season as a whole; I am very proud of them all because I was able to be very involved in 3 of their 4 shows this year.

Right after I finished at Metropolitan, Jon Collins called me to ask if I could assist on RENT, a project he was assisting on that opens off-Bway in July. So I pulled some strings and took time off from work and spent the better part of 2 weeks helping build model pieces and running errands. It was a good experience and I learned a lot. Mainly it’s a cool resume credit. I put in a lot of extra days at work to make up for the time I was taking off, so didn’t really take any weekends for about 2 months all told with all the shows and everything.

Around this time, the beginning of May, the weather was starting to get nice and I started to get spring fever. So I sort of conned an invitation from David from work to come to a barbeque at his and Hannah’s apartment. They have a sweet place in Chelsea with a small balcony. I came over after work one Sunday and we grilled burgers outside. And watched the end of the last Lakers game (they laughed at me as we were humiliated by the Mavs). And hung out and talked. It was a great time. I got sick from the vodka we were drinking so ended up sleeping on their couch for the night. David still enjoys teasing me about it.

The next week was my birthday. My small group got me a cake as did the frameshop. I hate it when people don’t tell people about their birthdays, so I planned a party at the Mexican place near my job and invited my coworkers, small group people, and pretty much everyone else I know in the city. I was a bit nervous about hosting a party, but it ended up being tons of fun. About 15 to 20 people came out over the course of the 5 hours I was at the restaurant. Christy was coming up to visit for the weekend so she was there and David and a couple others from work came, and my roommate, and lots of small group girls. It was cool to have all the different people from my life here meet each other. It was hard to talk to everyone, so I kind of facilitated conversations at first but ended up mostly talking with Christy and David. I drank many margaritas, not sure of the exact number. J Around 11 everyone left except me Christy and David; we stayed a bit longer and then David walked us down to the subway station and we came home and crashed. It was a great birthday; I thoroughly enjoyed it.

The next weekend I caught the train home for Remus’ graduation from college. It was a lovely visit: so good to take a break and see the fam and see Remus say goodbye to college. I was proud. We spent a fantastic evening with the Chapmans catching up on everyone’s lives. Some of my favorite people in the world. Had a great meal at Rio Grande which was lovely. But it was too short a visit: Daddy kindly drove me to the train early on Sunday morning, I was the last person on board, made it back to the city, and went straight to the shop for a full day of work.

And as soon as I got off work I met up with Meg who had come up for a weeklong visit and to attend a theatre conference. We had a great but busy week. She had to be at the conference most of the time and I worked a lot, but we did manage to have dinner together most nights and do some fun stuff. Like me getting my tattoo. It was fun, not too painful. I was a bit nervous, but actually the whole thing was pretty casual. I am very happy with it, very happy I got it. Every time I see it in the mirror I smile. It’s healed beautifully, no complications or itchiness or anything. As of today I’ve completed the 2 weeks care period, so I can now premier it to the unsuspecting world!

The last night of Meg’s visit I had gotten us tickets to go to a concert in Brooklyn to see Fang Island, a band that David introduced me to. I invited Stephanie to come too and we had a ton of fun. The evening started off a bit stressfully because my phone died and I had no way of meeting up with them after work, but the good folks at the Verizon store let me charge it for a couple minutes and I was able to find them. The concert was at 1130 so we had several hours to kill, so we went down to Brooklyn and took a really long walk around. Probably walked a couple miles. Eventually stopped into a biergarten for drinks and then found this awesome delicious and cheap southern-food place that had an outdoor garden to eat in. We loved the concert: the band was fantastic, brilliant musicians, great music, good crowd. It was a good night.

Meg left the next morning and I dragged myself out of bed in time to go downtown to tech my show. My latest design gig was at the Access Theater, same group of people I did Nance O’Neil with in the fall. They were doing a one-act play festival of 9 pieces directed by 3 people, and hired me to do the design. I’d been working on it for the past month and had been very frustrated: it was hard to work with so many people and communication was terrible; they kept changing their minds about things and not telling me about it. Anyway, we teched it over the weekend and got it up and running. We opened last Wednesday. I’m so happy to be done with it; it was cool to have another show and fun to see those people again, but it was messy and I felt that most of my ideas were sacrificed to the need to just get the thing open.

So that was last week. And then my entire life changed. I found a set design internship at a major Broadway designer’s studio and went in for an interview. And the designer gave me a huge wakeup call about the need to really pursue design if that’s actually what I want to do. Long story short, I’m going to intern for him for the next 6 months, Monday through Friday, and work at the frameshop on the weekends. It’ll be long, it’ll be hard, but I hope to learn a ton and get good experience and good perspective from it. I’m going to try very hard to rest through it and not get all bent out of shape about working 7 days a week and not having a ton of money. At the end of the day, it’s too good an opportunity to pass up, I can’t say no to it. I really feel that this is what God wants me to do; He’s basically thrown this in my lap without me even looking for it. I’m gonna need a ton of prayer to get through this, but right now I’m really excited about this new chapter.

My brain has been spinning all week as I readjust to the new everything. But I’ve still had fun. I’ve finally put all my files on my new beautiful mac (which I love!!!). On Friday I went out with David and Hannah for drinks and then to a BBQ place for dinner; it was so much fun to hang out with them. Saturday I met Stephanie and we went to a delicious Italian place in the Village for sangria and awesome food. We sat outside and caught up and she paid because it was my birthday dinner. J Sunday I went to church for the first time in a while; it was good. Excellent sermon from Keller on God as our Father. Definitely something I needed to hear.

And this weekend I’m vegetating. It’s my last free weekend until December, so today I’m doing absolutely nothing. I slept in until 11, and have been watching Gilmore Girls and am now writing to you all. I’m staying in my pajamas all day, am not leaving the apartment, and plan to order in some delivery for dinner. Tomorrow I’ll do all my errands and laundry and small group and transition back into life. And then it’s onward and upward.