I was trying to figure out if I could get the $25 off an American Express gift card and into one of my accounts for future use.
Am I careless or maybe I’m afraid given the chance … I will lose it? This is a quiet trauma of my life. So many moves. So many hellos and goodbyes to so many different people. I can’t remember it all and I am afraid of forgetting. Someday I will read my seventh-grade journals and I won’t shrink back in horror because I won’t recognize myself. It’s like The Notebook with crates of disturbing purgings, half-finished writings, thank you cards and kind letters from people who love me enough to have bothered, theatre programs, printouts of poetry and recipes, receipts, production histories, travel ephemera …
A puzzle of memories to piece together when it all looks brand-new again. A life’s final project.
That was a tangent I let happen because I was curious to see the words emerge.
The point of this post is to say, I found my PayPal business page and the profile has changed. I uploaded the content requested and now this exists –
https://www.paypal.biz/AliciaGrega
I’m not actively seeking additional work at this time. I’ve still got my hands full teaching seven classes at five schools again this semester and can’t hope to free my schedule before June. So I really have no business putting this out into the world right now. Except that I am a professional who hopes to add more Gregarious work in the future as I turn down my course load and make more time for my creative writing and theatrical goals. Common Play Factory has been a fragment of a dream until now. I can make something real that will help people grow and heal and learn and connect with the arts and storytelling and collective production explorations.
At this time, I am hoping to model professional efforts for my students. Not all of my experiments with digital media will coalesce into content worth storing in those crates for the rest of my life … to the annoyance of those who watch me move my life about in boxes.
But I think I’m finally on to something.
I still believe I can make something that matters. Hopefully several things.
I am creating alongside my students this semester. Writing the same poems. Creating more digital content.
Took me well beyond 10,000 hours to feel this confident and secure in my voice. Now that I’m here, it’s hurting not to write. Words keep forcing themselves out of me when I should be doing other things. Don’t worry, I will grade the assignments. “First things first” as Covey coined. But I’m not going to leave my art out of my life. It would be unhealthy.
It’s never too late. We must make ourselves ready for when the challenge arises. Sun Tzu-style – make ourselves stronger and smarter and more skilled while we, in time, win without fighting.
Maybe I’ll revise my CV creatively to reflect the hours spent absorbing life’s details and stories and music, how energy moves us, the hours spent playing with and building with language, the hours spent writing badly, and designing badly to sharpen skills into a more powerful tool. I’ve been wanting to make an infographic.
-ag
Gregarious Expressions 