hiatus

Remember back when I wrote about "plans"? The gist of that entry was that these plans we make are very likely to change. Well, mine continues to be an ever-evolving plan, and evolved it has over the last month.

The fact that I haven't written a substantial entry since early October is testament to this. I feel I've undergone a transitional month (of course, this was post transitional-September in Brazil, which was after a transitional summer in Paraguay... but I digress). One of the most recent changes of mind I had was realizing that I love living in Chicago. The city and my job at the music school have moved way up on my list of priorities. Another thing that has occurred to me is that I thrive on distractions; that is, if I have several different little projects, I complete all of them at a much higher level.

A couple of thoughts...

This morning I read through the introduction of my Princeton Review GRE Prep Workbook. It explains how the computerized test begins by giving you a question of medium difficulty - if you answer it correctly the next question is more difficult, and if you answer it incorrectly, the next question is easier. You go through the test getting knocked from easy questions to harder questions and back like a pendulum until the computer hones in on your final score. (Note: I always find the strangest things metaphoric. Please bear with me.) This image - bouncing back and forth between narrowing extremes until you finally squeeze into something that fits you "just right" - seemed appropriate for today, for the past month, and for the months and years to come. We're all honing in on something.

I have also been thinking a lot about the film (and book, which I just serendipitously found at a thrift store for 50 cents) High Fidelity. This month I took several short trips to visit friends and family in various parts of the country. I started at my mom's in Arkansas, then passed through Boston, Philadelphia, and Washington DC, and finally made a trip home to Minnesota for a few days. It reminded me of the way the main character in High Fidelity feels this need to check in with all of his old girlfriends before he can settle down and get on with things. It feels good to find those various points of "center" and figure out how they all connect, which ones held significance for different reasons. It was a wonderful luxury I had to be able to re-connect.

Forgive my rambling entry. I have been working on a few non-blog pieces of writing, and am a bit more focused on their coherence than I am here in this space. Until next time.