Gone again, the ides

The ides have come and gone, and I am still here. In the spring of 2010, I wrote a paper for a class assignment that changed my life. Here is the description of the assignment:

C.5. Assignment #4 (20% of the grade):  Free-write and an Ethnographic account of your Spring Break.  Using ethnographic narrative style, write a 5-7 pages account of what happened during the spring break. Write this assignment for yourself such that you will always remember what happened during the last week of March 2010.

I found the topic comical, considering that I did not have a “spring break” to write about. I was working full-time. Yet, the experience of writing was a revelation. I sat down and channeled every emotion onto the page.

On the ides of March 2010, I had just been offered a permanent position at a national park in Alaska. It was surreal, a dream. And at the time, I imagined it to be the answer to the financial woes and challenges that come with life as a seasonal employee.

Suffice it to say that my musings were a bit naïve. However, the catharsis I experienced from writing, as well as the positive response from my professors and fellow students in my cohort, inspired me to create this blog and incorporate the practice of writing into my life.

I created this blog and subsequently realized an identity as a writer that I never thought possible. It was the beginning of a sense of self and a desire to know and share my self more deeply with my community—local, global, and virtual.

Those assignments made possible all the changes I have set in motion to become a more sustainable person in the years that followed. I have made it my goal and practice to write, compose music, and release my inner creative voice. I have found a way to create something beautiful and lift my spirits through the moments of joy and intense grief that come with a life in transition.

I have found a way to embrace the unknown. I may not always move through uncertainty with grace and poise; however, I am thankful to dance with the universe with awareness and intention.

Happy spring.