{"id":1651,"date":"2010-09-25T10:43:45","date_gmt":"2010-09-25T17:43:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sarahdopp.com\/blog\/?p=1651"},"modified":"2010-09-25T10:48:14","modified_gmt":"2010-09-25T17:48:14","slug":"awake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/2010\/awake\/","title":{"rendered":"“AWAKE!”"},"content":{"rendered":"
Heads up, this content is 16 years old. Please keep its age in mind while reading.<\/div>

Good morning.<\/p>\n

In a couple of hours, I’m going to a wedding in Dolores Park, at which all of the attendees will be dressed in white, preferably bridal gowns. It will look a whole lot like a Brides of March<\/a> flash mob, except in september, and with a real wedding involved.<\/p>\n

Last night, I hosted the six-year anniversary Queer Open Mic<\/a> with my co-organizer, Baruch, who is an unstoppable force of creativity and community passion. Last night was one of the first nights in a long time that we ran out of time before we ran out of “if we have extra time” performers.\u00a0 It sucks to have to turn people away from a microphone, but my head was still buzzing from all the art for hours afterward.<\/p>\n

The night before that, I went to the unofficial BlogHer Debriefing dinner (reflecting on a conference I actually played hookie from this year, but have a long-standing relationship to). I walked out with a belly full of enchiladas, two work requests, and the firm encouragement from Shannon Rosa<\/a> and Jennifer Byde Myers<\/a> still rattling in my head, telling me I can do this. All of this. Telling me I’m doing better than I think I am.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, I’ll fly to New England for a week of rest, work, family, and foliage. (Mostly foliage.) I haven’t seen New England peak autumn foliage since I moved to California 6 years ago, and I know that emptiness has been getting to me because I painted my apartment red, yellow, and orange.\u00a0 (BTW, if you’re in New England, the best way to see me on this trip is to be willing to come to me. I’ll probably be somewhere in New Hampshire, excepting a few stopovers in Massachusetts.)<\/p>\n

Oh, and I got a laptop last week. I’m no longer tethered to the desktop in my studio apartment, working entirely from home. I can co-work now. I can build websites from hotel rooms. I can make the city my office. (I just have to learn to use a PC again is all.)<\/p>\n

And this is all a long-winded way of telling you that I feel awake again.<\/p>\n

There’s a poster in my kitchen that Hugh MacLeod<\/a> drew on for me at at last year’s CrunchUp party. (That’s how he signs those posters. By drawing on them.) I told him, I feel stuck and stagnant and I don’t want to get up in the morning. Draw something that makes me feel awake. <\/em>He drew this:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

It took a year, but I’m feeling it now. I like getting up in the morning again. There’s stuff to do.\u00a0 I have a team. I like my work. I have a new baby<\/a> to feed, and it still has a long way to grow, but it already embodies everything<\/a> I<\/a> spent<\/a> the<\/a> last<\/a> year<\/a> trying<\/a> to<\/a> articulate<\/a>.\u00a0 I have a path now, and it’s not based on what people told me I should do. It’s what I found when I went looking for the things I care about.\u00a0 And as far as I can tell, this direction didn’t even exist before (at least, not the way I want to do it). I made it up. That’s how I know it’s right.<\/p>\n

And something completely freaking spectacular is happening to me because of this shift: I want to meet people again. For the first time in years<\/em>, I’m interested in being social. I want to dance with everyone, to find more people to be close to, to listen to stories, to connect ideas, to engage.<\/p>\n

When I felt lost, I disengaged from others quite a bit. On purpose. I couldn’t afford to fall into someone else’s agenda.<\/p>\n

But now I feel unshakeable, and I want to keep walking.<\/p>\n

See you soon.<\/p>\n

Love,
\nSarah<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Heads up, this content is 16 years old. Please keep its age in mind while reading.Good morning. In a couple of hours, I’m going to a wedding in Dolores Park, at which all of the attendees will be dressed in white, preferably bridal gowns. It will look a whole lot like a Brides of March […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[95,2,31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-my-story","category-personal","category-the_creative_life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1651"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1651\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1671,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1651\/revisions\/1671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}