Yep, that’s right I told you I have a short attention span and I believe I also mentioned that I have zero follow through. So here it is a little over 2 weeks since my last post and I am just now getting around to an update. I am glad to say that I haven’t just been sitting around watching TV. I have actually been living. Yes I said living. Not in any grand type way, but in little ways that mean something only to myself.
I live in a small town. A town that I never imagined myself to be living in when I was younger. I saw myself in a big city, riding the subway, and working in a high rise building. I never knew what type of career I would have, but I new it would be important and I would go to plays and concerts. I would spend a lazy Sunday afternoon browsing in art galleries and museums. Of course I do none of those things and it’s all because I live in this stupid small town. A town where nothing happens. A town where there is nothing to do. A town so wrapped up in being a quaint tourist destination that it never stops to think about the people who live here full time.
Except, what if it wasn’t the where I lived that was the problem? What if I was the problem? What if waiting until I could live the life I imagined I would as a young woman was what was keeping me from having all that now? In my previous post I spoke of a list of goals that I want to experience in my lifetime. Well I am proud to say I have started to experience life for myself.
No, I haven’t gone to Alaska and I haven’t gone to SDCC. I have started to learn ASL, although I am still on my A, B, C’s. I can never seem to remember the sign for “R”. But I am practicing everyday and hopefully in a month I will be ready to move on to practicing my finger spelling and then on to numbers, days, months, and other useful signs to have.
But the biggest life experience I have had in the past 2 weeks is that I participated in a Zombie Run. Or rather my best friend and I took are kids and some of their friends to the Jacksonville (not where I live, but close) Zoo Spooktacular. If you have never heard of Spooktacular it is an event that the local zoo puts on every year around Halloween. They decorate the zoo and allow the public to come in the evening to walk through the zoo and get candy at the candy station and walk through areas that are decorated as the Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland, & Pirates of the Caribbean.
Stationed periodically throughout the zoo are what they call Scare Zones and it was there that I was able to experience one of the goals I mentioned in my previous post, Zombie Run. Because it technically wasn’t a Zombie Run some may say that it doesn’t count. Well I say bullshit. It counts because of a couple of things: 1. There were people dressed up as Zombies who sole mission it was to scare the people walking through that area. 2. Because well, frankly I got spooked and at one point I was about to start walking faster until I realized that I had my daughter with me and I couldn’t leave her.
Now if you are wondering why this qualifies as living life or is a sign that I am letting go the life I imagined and embracing the life I have it would be because for years I have wanted to go to Spooktacular. But I always found reasons why I couldn’t go. It cost too much money. I was tired from work. I didn’t have the gas. And the excuses went on and on and on. Until this year that is. This year I decided no more excuses. No more talking myself out of it. No more waiting for the perfect moment. As it got closer to the day we were going the weather reports said it was going to rain and my best friend almost backed out. At one point she even hinted that she might not go because of the threat of rain.
I will admit a part of me thought about cancelling and waiting until next year when the timing would be better. But I decided that rain or no rain I was going. Even if it meant we got rained on. Even if it meant that the entire night ended up a wash I was still going. Because either way I would be living life and not waiting for it. And let me just say that I probably wont go to Spooktacular again. Not that I didn’t have fun, because I did, but it was crowded, noisy, and you couldnt really see any animals. And it was totally worth experiencing and I am so glad I went. So remember that list? I am thinking of expanding it.
My Long Walk to Nowhere 