September is about new beginnings.
It is about
fresh starts. And, thankfully, September does not hold the weightiness of
January. There are no heavy
expectations. Instead, it is a
refreshing moment where we can start over again from those January resolutions that
may not have actually been implemented.
Things have not exactly turned
out the way that I envisioned back in January. There were goals
and resolutions but the action steps were not there to bring those dreams into fruition.
Rather than mourn
this seeming failures, I treat them as opportunities to start again. I review why I didn’t do what was necessary to make the goal happen. Why was I dragging
my feet? Was that goal
really what I was wanting for myself? Perhaps, my priorities
and desires were slowly shifting as different things came up in my life.
September is my month
of reevaluation and reformation. I loved school as a kid, and four weeks
in, I’m stoked
that AB feels the same way. Now that I am no longer in school myself, I find that I am needing to find a way to make the excitement
about learning seem fresh and new even though I’m not in a classroom.
I have decided to educate myself.
I am creating my own curriculum. I am creating
my own fellowship. I am researching
and writing for myself. When I was younger, I would throw myself into subjects, acquiring as much knowledge that I could about a given subject. I had three
inch binders crammed with notes, pictures and articles about my obsessions du jour.
Thanks to this little thing called the World
Wide Web I had plethora of resources available to me. There are two specific subjects that I vividly recall soaking up like a sponge. The first was the Mafia. I was an 11 year old kid printing out pictures of bullet-ridden
mobsters and crime family trees while I memorized all of the dialogue of the Scorcese
classic Goodfellas. Disturbing, yes. But,
I felt utterly inspired by the drama and danger. The second was Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
(GWTW). I was led to GWTW from the Outsiders
by S.E. Hinton. If a boy as tough as Ponyboy was sensitive enough
to read a book like GWTW, then I had to try it. I tried it and loved it. I read it in two days. I was absolutely smitten. My dad introduced me to the film and I was officially
obsessed. My binder was full of pictures
of every single costume from every possible angle with notes about behind-the-scenes
gossip. I could name every actress and actor
considered for Rhett and Scarlett. And of
course, I memorized every line in this film as well, accent and all.
Perhaps, these interests made me an odd child (and I still wonder where
I found all that time to gather all of my research), but that is what made me Me.
As I got older, I started to lose that focus.
There were various reasons, time and the coolness factor being the main ones. But 15+ years later, now that it sometimes feels
like I have an abundance of time and I no longer have the desire to impress my peers
by downplaying “nerdy” pursuits, I think it’s time to get back a little of my 11-year-old
self.
If I could go back in time, I would bring
11-year-old self a bouquet of sharpened pencils and some brand spanking new notebooks
and say, “Have at it, kid.”
If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost;
that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them. - Henry David Thoreau
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