there have been several adults in my life - college professors, friends of my parents, even members of my family - who were still so young (say, 40 or 50) and had done what seemed like an impossible number of different things in their lives. i was always struck by how seamlessly they could fit all that into a cohesive life, and how they showed up in my own life, able to relate to me while still having lived so many different lives. so many things had happened to them! they had done so many varied and interesting things! so many jobs, relationships, experiences, places...i always wished i could look back in 20 or 30 years and say the same.
i am 26 and i'm in the middle of packing up my apartment. this is something i have done, of course, several times - when my parents moved us to a new house in traverse city, when i was preparing to move into a college dorm, when i moved to downtown chicago, moved to brooklyn, moved to manhattan.
packing is always a little emotional and definitely nostalgic, and even though i've only been in this apartment for six months, i still find surprising things.
one of my favorite mugs, a nicely-shaped white one from the Industrial Engineering Department at the McCormick School of Engineering at Northwestern University, now stained from my habitual coffee-drinking with little brown rings on the inside.
the woven blanket with trains and cars (!) all over it that a still-unknown guardian angel wrapped around me on a dark rainy night in november of last year when i'd been hit by a car and was trying not to lose consciousness on the median.
a ceramic quaker oats cookie jar, a goodbye gift from the supply chain data team i worked with at pepsico.
books on the history of modern dance, discrete event simulation, and organizational psychology.
a photocopied contract with Links Hall for You Can't Dance Out the Side of Your Mouth.
etc, etc... many more with backstories too long for this post.
i don't think of my life path as being particularly varied, but i've come to realize that, actually, life is pretty fantastic and everyone has this amazing set of endlessly interesting circumstances and interactions, jobs and relationships, apartments, cars, and crazy coincidences. i'm only four years out of college and already my life has taken a vastly different direction than so many of my closest friends' lives. i'm only 26 and my life has already been surprisingly varied. sometimes it takes going through weird things crammed into the corners of your little apartment to realize just how varied it is.
and to tie it back to my creative life... all of this comes out, of course, in one's art - and definitely in my own choreography. how inspiring that without even really seeking it out, life hurls at you all these interesting things to express and remember and feel! how inspiring that every single artist-- every single person-- has that unique set of silly, poignant, tragic, interesting moments! who knows who i might run into in 20 years that might find this life astounding? and what a wonderful responsibility it is to live fully through all of those moments, because hey, no one else is going to have the chance.
