Yep, still have a pulse...

I've just been feeling a little quiet lately. Grandma broke her hip in January, and with the trauma came a new level of Alzheimer's. At this point, though, she has enough professional care, and I don't have to do as much as I did over the last couple of years.

I've definitely rediscovered my love for opera production, and am crossing my fingers that my grad school plan works out. Don't congratulate me yet - I still need to finish a couple undergrad things. It'll happen, though. Baby steps. Enrolling this week in one of them, as an online course. I'll have six months to complete it... I'll do it in three.

Then there were further growing pains in respect to improv, and I got tired of hearing myself talk about it. Now my relationship to the craft is becoming clearer to me. Maybe I'll blog about it soon, or maybe I won't bother. For a while, I seemed to play better the less I thoug -- oh. Right. Well, dammit, I'm just not a not-thinking person! It's like breathing! It just happens! But what I was talking about was that I hadn't really been tracking my progress and goals, or thinking much about improv during the week. I just showed up to class, and things seemed to work. On the other hand, now I have a couple specific goals that I'm able to see after a few months of not keeping track (and/or taking time off for other shows).

Somewhere in the middle of all this, I discovered that I love swimming laps. This is a big deal for me, because I've never found a form of exercise I could really get into. And I hated swimming lessons as a kid, I just wanted to play around in the water. Then suddenly, at a Holiday Inn in Chicago, it all came together. Water feels nice, and I don't get sweaty. I can swim a few laps, rest and kick around a little, then swim a few more. It doesn't hurt my knees and ankles. I don't suck at it like I do at sports that involve catching, throwing, or hitting. And even if friends I like are around, I can still go into my own little underwater world. It's perfect. I'm joining the Y tomorrow.

Last but not least, here's a song that's been in my head. It feels like sunshine and underwater all at once.