I suppose if one is going to create a blog about persistence, it would be best to persist in actually writing the blog. To do otherwise is to slip into rather a public, meta-cognitive malaise, which is part of the reason I started doing this in the first place. Accountability....apparently, I can't function without it. Many apologies to my kind followers for the lapse in follow-through. Despite my inactivity I have, in fact, had lots of ideas for blog posts...
1. I used to write things and get them published. Why don't I do that anymore?
2. Why do I often do the exact opposite of what I know I should do in any given situation?
3. Does going to concerts count as a hobby?
4. Things I want to do this winter and why they make me super boring
5. Aaand, let's throw in the obligatory diet and exercise angst for good measure.
I will never actually subject anyone to number 5; it is more of a marker just to make it clear I'm just as shallow as everyone else.
Number 2 is probably best worked out on the couch, and number 1 feels like a set-up for regretful wallowing. Besides, today feels like a day to look forward, so I am going with a combination of 3 and 4.
One thing that I have persisted in quite spectacularly since moving to Portland is attending concerts. Doing this mostly by myself holds no shame or discomfort for me; in fact, I kind of like it. I can show up when I want, leave when I want, stand where I want, talk to whomever I want, and generally lead the kind of super self-centered existence that I apparently truly enjoy. That is not to say I don't like going with my friends, but being unable to locate a friend to go with doesn't deter me.
So, is this a hobby? I am not producing anything. I am not actually engaging in any activity myself (except showing up and buying beer and maybe a poster if it is rad and signed and numbered). And yet it is something I enjoy doing, seek out doing, do when I really shouldn't be doing it, and think about when I am not doing it. It is really the only thing besides feeding myself, sleeping, and working that I never hesitate to do or question whether I should do. (I mean, I certainly hesitate when it comes to working, but I believe in the concept of work and need to work to stay alive, so my hesitation comes more from the drudgery of daily execution rather than avoidance of the practice entirely.) Eating and sleeping and working are not hobbies. But perhaps an activity that feels so innately like something that I do as an unquestioned part of life should count as one. True artists are compelled to do art. Perhaps consuming art is my art.
But I would like to feel naturally compelled toward some activity that involves production or practice. I have two ideas while sailing is on the back burner for winter. One is playing the piano. The other is learning French.
Now, I realize that this pretty much makes me an Elizabeth Bennett wannabe and, before you know it, I will be asking my girlfriends to take turn about the room so we can show off our figures. (Wait, that wasn't Elizabeth...that was Bingley's sister? Or some other little Victorian bitch, I can't remember.) They are pretty much the whitest, most uncool and uptight activities a person could chose. BUT! How NOT uptight and SUPER cool would it be to walk into a jazz bar in Senegal and sit down at the piano and accompany myself while I sing in French!? Because I totally have the opportunity to do that all the time and I just can't pull it off in my current talentless, monolingual state.
Also, winter is a time to do things that can be done without leaving the house because, frankly, I have never given over to "embracing the rain." Since I will be riding my bike to work AND grocery shopping AND forcing my resentful dog to exercise in the rain, I just don't feel like I need to also sign up to soak myself while running or sailing or geocaching or saving stranded hikers (just kidding, I would never do that anyway). I want to be inside, hunkered down by my heater, running up my electricity bill in my Snuggie, preferably drinking Tuaca and hot apple cider. I want to be warm on my way to WASP-ish sophistication. And dry. And still (well, relatively still...gotta move them fingers to tickle the ivories). Like one of those rodents that buries itself under piles of debris for months at at time...except with Rosetta Stone.
This image, followed (naturally) by the Senegal-jazz-bar image, is so very pleasing to me that I am not in least afraid that I won't be able to do it. I won't be able to stop doing it. My neighbors will intervene because I will be improvising so effusively at three in the morning. Parisians will stop me on the street and embrace me as one of their own, so obvious will be my francophilia. I will be a drunken, babbling, Snuggie-clad, musical rodent. Nothing unnerving about that image.
I'm sure it will make lots of people want to go to concerts with me.
