I have to remind myself that when I start to feel tinges of sadness it's most likely because I'm in the process of letting something go, and, almost always, there is greater happiness on the other side. I have to say this to myself over and over. This standing on the precipice part is a real bitch. Every cell in my body is at attention, ready to respond to some kind of directive and yet I have a hard time pin-pointing exactly what it is that's bothering me because, quite frankly, I don't really want to identify it. Because then I have to address it, jump off the cliff and then realize it's over. And yes, there is relief after the dive, but holding onto crap is what I know; it's my human condition. My name is Melissa and I'm an emotional hoarder. I need a producer from A&E to hire a junk crew to remove all the shit from my brain and haul it away while I try and hold on to the useless bits like bottle caps and love letters in a shoebox.
Since I arrived in New York I've worked most days. Because obviously I'm here to work and to learn. And I'm having a great time doing it, as I've made mention a few times in these recent posts. In fact, I feel the same sense of hope that I did when I lived here when I was studying at FIT almost 10 years ago. I'm trying to figure out if that's because I have a pathological need to jump from one creative discipline to another (costume design to goldsmithing to recreational cooking) and it's some kind of well-established pattern of folly, or if it's just a little internal compass reminder that I'm on the right path for right now. It scares me to think that I'm constantly reinventing myself, my life and my surroundings, but I just deeply hope that I don't have ADD or that I am a dilettante of the highest order (though I don't think I'm wealthy enough to be considered a dilettante, anyway).
Even though I've worked most days I've managed to visit with old friends, one of which drove down several hours from another city. It was an uncharacteristically spontaneous thing for him to do, which is a weird thing for me to even know about him, because I don't actually really know him at all...