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March 21,
2006
I lay in bed last night, not
sleeping, thinking about the past six months, thinking about Now, and
What Might Happen in the next six months. I thought about change, and
about how I tend to avoid it, and about how when it does come it seems
to come all at once. I thought about the work I’ve done, and what I
didn’t do, and how I feel about it now and how I might feel about it in
the future.
For those of you who have followed this site over the past year (at this
point TWD has been around about that long in its current form),
then you know something about what I’ve done and what I’ve been doing. I
left my job about six months ago to work on the Mount Pleasant Project
and to try and find a new direction. The project “ended,” for lack of a
better term, not so long ago, and I started looking for full-time
employment again.
That job search ended yesterday, and in a couple of weeks I’ll go back
to work, full-time, for someone else. After six months of
self-employment and artistic ventures, it might be something of a shock.
But I’m also hoping it will be a new direction, a new subject matter
(I’ll be reporting on education issues) and a new … a new something, I
suppose.
As for the project, and my work. The Mount Pleasant Project is currently
on display at the D.C. Public Library, Martin Luther King Branch. The
project will hang there until March 28, and then will remain on display
at
www.MountPleasantProject.org.
If, six months ago, I had
the ability to look forward in the future and see the completed work,
I’m not sure how I would have felt. For sure, the final outcome is very
different from what I had imagined. I think it is more of an outsiders
view than I had envisioned, less personal and more external. But I am
also very happy, and very proud of the work. I do think it captures
something about the neighborhood, and the people who live here and who
have seen the work seem to verify that feeling.
My one fear right now is that one day I will think back about this time
and lament not having done more. That I began to worry too much about
money, and consequentially did less than I could have. At the outset, I
told myself I was ok going broke. The venture was supposed to be a
net-loss for me, and I accepted that. It was supposed to be a
non-sustaining, artistic adventure of sorts. But early on I realized
that I could probably eek out a break-even existence, and I think
sometimes that goal overshadowed other things I could have done. |
That’s not fair, of course. It’s bad enough to look back and regret,
most times; worse, still, to look forward and regret the regrets you’re
bound to have. I could have traveled more, I could have done this or
that or something else. But you make the best decisions you can at the
time you have to make them, and I think that’s what I’ve done. I can
honestly say I’m proud of the last six months, proud to think of all the
people who supported and encouraged me, and at least at the moment I
don’t regret a moment of any of it.
One final change, is that I’ve
decided to move. This is both a very tiny change and a very large one.
I’ve lived in Mount Pleasant for six years now, and so leaving it seems
as much like a philosophical change as it does a simple residence
change. In truth, I’m not moving far — about one mile up the road.
However, that one mile puts me in Cleveland Park, which is in some ways
light years from Mount Pleasant.
So that’s where I am, and a bit about where I’m heading. I have a little
time before the move and the job so I can relax and think and sort of
reset. I feel like I’m at that scene in so many movies and plays where
the characters refocus before continuing on to the next act. This is
probably, I think, as “neat” a moment (script-wise) as I’ve ever
experienced, where the “new” future seems apparent, has a defined-start
and will hold untold things.
That’s a crap way to look at it, of course: life doesn’t work that way,
not in acts or scenes or with scripted plot lines or twists. But at the
moment it does feel a bit that way.
I want to again thank everyone for their support. The last year, and
especially the last six months, have been amazing. Your support has been
incredible, and the site has gotten about 14,000 visits across 2005 and
2006 so far. Many of you have felt connected enough with my work to want
to hang it on your own walls, and I am infinitely flattered and indebted
to you, not just for the financial support but for the emotional as
well.
This update is not in any way an “end,” but I do feel like I wanted to
post some thoughts about what is going on and what will happen. I’m not
going anywhere, of course, and will continue to update often. But I do
feel like something has been completed. At least for the moment.
Thanks for everything…
--Robert
(click
here for the previous entry)
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