Of No Fixed Address, But Not Any Port in the Storm

Americans have the day off today, but we Canadians don't get a statutory holiday until Easter. This is why, if you visit Canada in February, we all seem so tired and bitchy. Just hand us a beer, and we'll be fine.

I have to make a little list of things I'm going to achieve this week. I've never been the "list" type but in this time of active change-making in my life, I'm realizing that having little goals are what allow me to make things happen.

Like this cardio gym I was writing about. The woman called me back last night, and frowned on my thoughts of coming out to their hardest class as a starter, and has instead given me a more reserved plan of attack, which I'm thrilled with. Every now and then I know when I've heard the voice of reason. Surprising, I know.

So, I'm planning to head there Wednesday night and check out the stretching class, just for starters. I'm so fortunate this place is 3 blocks from my home. Yay! I think making myself go there a couple times a week will be huge on a lot of levels for me, which will be fodder for writing another time, but before I can even get there, I need to have a plan.

I don't think I've done enough planning for what I'm trying to do. There's a difference between what I do, which is coming up with an idea of what I want to achieve, and some notions on how to get that happening, and the rigid "This is what I'm doing" planning done by some others that even has a how-to guide aspect to it. In my world of planning, nothing's written in stone because I believe the world can sometimes present a completely different path that offers so much more to you, and you're a fool if you don't seize that opportunity.

Take, for example, how I like to travel. A great example is when I went to California for a one-month road trip on my own back in 1999, the last time I was able to go anywhere for more than just a few days. I planned a road trip that had me staying in lighthouses, writer's retreats on the ocean, drinking beer and writing where Jack Keroauc wrote much of his great work, catching a play at the Shakespeare festival, heading for a day at wine country with the sunrise on the road before me (where I had my lunch with a bottle of wine, loaf of baguette, cheeses, staring out at the valley from a mountaintop, lying there like I was the only person in the world), hostelling in the Redwoods, scouring San Francisco, and even had a fluke night hanging with a German guy, wandering the streets of Sacramento where we heard Cake rehearsing for a gig at 4am on a dead downtown street. Had a beer, sat below the window, and waited for the pink sunrise to paint the street.

I had incredible experiences and met awesome people on every leg of my trip, had beers with 'em, smoked good things with 'em, just had wild experiences, and all because I left myself room for creativity and spontanaeity all around every single thing I'd planned. I knew what I wanted to do, but what I left completely open was how to get there. I'd come up with "the default way", meaning the one route I knew I could take to get there, but then I told myself I'd look for a better way, knowing I had a sure thing in my back pocket.

But... you hear about that trip and that mentality and I think you maybe start to understand that this... dry person I had become, living on the perimeter, is miles and miles away from the person I used to be. But I use past tense now in talking about the person I've recently been. I'm officially not her anymore. I'm somewhere in limbo. Neither here nor there, not this nor that. I am the existential equivalent of No Fixed Address. And it is good. It'll get wearisome if it's the status quo for any length of time, but for now it is good.

I don't want to go beyond this, though, to the step where you have no guiding instruments and you go where you're bantered to, "Any Port in the Storm". No Fixed Address is good, 'cos it's just ambulatory. Any Port in the Storm is desperate and need-fuelled. I am not desperate. Just very decided.

So, I'm off to the bus to begin this process of Planning. I will divide the year up and have Big Things and Little Things to do each month, and a master list of Just Things, and will allow myself the freedom to grab Just Things on a whim to fill out each month. I already have ideas in my head to take me all the way to August, but they feel like they're swimming aimlessly, and I want it to feel more concrete.

Enjoy your day off, Americans. Here's hoping I'm working on a great show at work today. That's the great thing about my job. Every day is a different surprise. :)

(Oh, and for those following the antics of our protagonist at home, our protagonist is bussing even though the nice fella fixed her bike for her yesterday, because the region slipped into a nasty cold spell over night and a -15 to -20 windchill on a scooter is just so very unfun. So. Slumming it with transit... and a great book by Banana Yoshimoto. Another kick-ass femme I'm glad to be reading right now.)