Embracing Outsiderdome

I've been doing yoga regularly for a very long time.

All sorts. I'm pretty non-discriminatory at this point in my life.

When I got back to Philadelphia after Christmas Break at the end of December I was having a very difficult time re-adjusting after having spent ten days with many of my favorite humans and my family. Never mind that there was nothing to do until the fourth week of January. So I signed up for a yoga studio special. The first money I had spent on myself in Philadelphia that did not relate to sustenance or something that was school required. 

The studio is a three minute walk from my apartment. It's a version of hotish yoga, which wasn't my first choice, but it was so close and it was Winter, after all. My first few classes there were great. I love being a student in a yoga studio. I loved being somewhere anonymously again. Sneak in, sweat, sneak out. I quietly mumble hellos and goodbyes and give a small nod and briefest of eye contact as I'm scooting out the door. Part of something bigger than yourself, while still able to hide behind the masses. No one knows my name. I don't know anyone. I just leave my troubles in a puddle on the floor in the studio.

                        

I went for all forty days of my intro package. More than a few times I went twice in a day. 

I love yoga, but I'm so much more apt to practice with a class. Structure.

Toward the end of my package deal, an announcement was made after class that they were still looking for people to help with their Energy Exchange program, which means if you work three sessions a week, helping the instructor check students in, tidying up after class and making a commitment to the community, you were given free access to all classes at the studio. It was perfect, and the only way I'd probably be able to continue practicing. And it meant giving up something I had become so comfortable in: anonymity. 

I volunteered and started almost immediately. The processing of students and regular tidying around the studio is easy enough. If, like me, you've worked a zillion costumer service and retail jobs, all the steps are pretty much the same, just with different intentions and a different computer system. I arrive at class a half hour prior to practice and stay about a half hour later. I check people in and answer any questions they might have. I encourage and congratulate them if it's their first time. 

It started to sink in slowly, then once school started back up and I was regularly running around hardwood floors with a band of crazy weirdos, it really started to hit me. I don't belong there. I think I noticed it for the first time when one of my fellow "Energy Exchange-ers" said, 

"Let's get a picture of all of us in a row doing headstand!" 

"Sure!" I replied.

I don't really have headstand. I mean, I have MY headstand. Yoga's a practice after all. But it was about community. It was about sharing with people.

She later posted the picture to Facebook and it struck me hard and fast. Second in from the left, like a slightly dangerous adolescent turkey in a flock of graceful and still flamingos was a very physically honest me. One leg half raised and blurry, the other bent and resting in my hip socket. My generous hips and thighs taking the space and drawing attention to themselves by a ridiculously bold henna print neon teal and pink yoga pant.

        

Good God I don't belong there. It was so clear  in that moment. Among these graceful women whose arms were lean and ate quinoa and kale and sipped wine on patios. Who were either already taking teacher training or being courted by the studio owners to do so regularly. Me and my home-made hair cut and thrift-shopped yoga clothes and a mat my sister had gifted to me ten years ago. Me in my 450 square foot apartment in the same neighborhood as the studio. Me an my sweat the second I walked into the lobby. Me and my beer. Me and my chipped teeth. Me and my movement-based theatre program. Me and my shame shame SHAME.

I continued to feel this way. I was relating to my partner how uncomfortable I was with how much I felt like I didn't belong. How I felt like I could never be a part of this community. How I wondered if it was a Philadelphia thing or a me thing. Without missing a beat he said, "I don't understand why you're not embracing being an outsider. That's what I've always seen you do."

Oops. 

So here I am. No longer sneaking out of the studio. No longer making eye contact for as little time as possible with the fancy lululemon-wearing, artist warehouse-living, hairs done every 6-8 weeks clientele. Now it's a big giant smile, my best shot at remembering their names (forever a curse. Face blindness is real.) and still working on unfurling that headstand (and handstand).

                    

       

That makes it sound really easy. It's not. I'm nervous to smile at these people. I'm nervous every they'll see how I'm sweating before I even walk into the studio because I rode my bike there. I'm nervous they'll see me sweating because I'm nervous. I'm nervous I don't belong and no amount of being a novelty weird theatre grad student is going to help that. Really, I'm nervous every they don't want me there, because I want to be there. But it's not our samenesses that make us interesting as humans. The exciting part of most humans is what makes us weirdos.

I'm a weirdo in most social settings. It only really stands out to me when I've been around performers for a long time and then I'm thrown into a more "average" social setting, which is very much what the yoga studio is. I still feel shame- more on that next week, but I mostly feel lucky that I get to see these people as they are and I'm getting better at letting them see me for who I am. I'm not ashamed to be here studying devised theatre, even if no one knows what that means. I'm immensely proud. It took a shit ton of work to get here, and I will weirdo all over the place to celebrate.

Ownership: It's Mine

Summer. I'm in it, people. Like, seven weeks or something. I don't even know. It's getting weird. Here's some things I've noticed over the last seven + weeks:

I live in Philadelphia. Wait. What?

It's hot and often very muggy here. 

I don't have classes eight hours a day to distract me from

I frequently don't finish thoughts.

My time is easily occupied and totally don't feel guilty about watching seasons of anything on Netflix, HBOgo or Hulu.

The West Wing really holds up.

I totally feel guilty about binge watching seasons of anything, even if it's slightly intellectual.

I lie to myself about feeling guilty.

I hate elections, hatred and what burbles up through the mean (all?) parts of the internet because of them.

People at the local thrift store know me by name now.

I don't want to be over dramatic. I'm not going completely stir-crazy. I've adapted over the last few weeks. I'm on a regular schedule practicing piano at school. I strum around on the ukulele now and then. I contacted one of my instructors that I really enjoy working with and asked if her theatre company needs any help this Summer. It does, so I'm freelancing some research for her.

In my meeting with her she said she's draw up a contract for me (my work is voluntary) just so we both know what's expected of me, that way there's no miscommunication and we both have it in writing. A few days after that meeting, it struck me that everyone in the theatre (maybe even artistic) community should do this. I've been a part of countless processes where rifts were formed simply due to someone not fully understanding what their job was. Not due to any fault of their own, just because they had never done it before, or it wasn't laid out for them. Then I recalled a process where we were under contract for a very small stipend, but I was SO relieved that it was in writing and I signed a piece of paper saying "this is what I'm going to do and this is how I expect you to treat me".

Contracts, guys, or Letters of Agreement, whatever you care to call them, are pretty great. 

                         

                             I bet someone was contracted for this.          Sorry. I just needed a 

                                                       Reason to use this photo...

I think they're so great that I took some of my Summer vacation time to write one for myself.

I was considering my goals for the Summer and they were all things like, "learn how to play piano" or "play a lot of ukulele" or "Write more". All worthy, to be sure, but none of them specific. 

So I wrote my first contract as a self-employed artist. For myself. To sign and complete.

You know me: Party. Animal. (Now complete with contract!)

Most responsibilities are weekly. It's not a small amount of work, but nearly all of it are things I'm doing anyway, just sporadically and in a disorganized manner.

No more, my friends. I present to you: My signed contract for being a Human Who Makes Things. This will also mark the first time I've actually attached my name to this blog. Taking ownership all over the place here people.

Contract for Human Who Makes Things

Contract Duration: June 20th, 2016- August 29th 2016

Job Title: Self-Contracted Artist

Job Duties:

Rehearse piano 3 hours weekly

Rehearse Ukulele 2 hours weekly

Read required reading 1 hour weekly

Read for pleasure 1 hour weekly

One blog post weekly

Swim Pony research: 7-10 hours weekly

One postcard or letter weekly

Physical activity excluding bicycle commutes: 4 times weekly lasting 30 minutes or more.

Make one thing outside of "regular craft" each week: 2 hours

This can include, but is not limited to: Dance, songwriting, painting, drawing, acrobatic sequencing, comedy, construction paper collages, model-building, carpentry, clowning, origami, etc.

One movie weekly

Knit 1 hour weekly

Share one work-in-progress with one or more persons each month, beginning no later than June 30, 2016.

Compensation: Self high-fives, spontaneous dance parties, artistic growth and satisfaction, staying out of stupid trouble while getting into all kinds of worthwhile trouble.

I, Sarah A. Gardner, fully understand and commit to completing the above tasks as stated to the best of my abilities. 

                                  

        

Oh yeah, I also wrote it by hand. Because. Summer. And you can't sign an iPad with pen.

So. One blog post a week. I suppose that takes a bit of the surprise out of regularly unscheduled contact. I'll try to make still as unexpected and strange as I am.

I'll end with a yummy Knit Preview:

                       

            

Summer Begins

Summer break is upon me and I'm not sure how well I'm taking it.

I got a j-o-b for the Summer. I'll have to wait until my first pay check comes in to really see how happy I am with it, but for the time being I like it just fine. Nice people. Good food. Tips. Under 40 hours a week. Decent hourly. It's a little ridiculous, actually.

Having now been in Philadelphia for over 8 months I feel like I finally moved here. I'm not longer around the same small group of 13 people every day (all of whom I love, I just didn't feel like I moved anywhere particular other than in with my class). I have resources to see more shows. Go out to eat occasionally. Buy more groceries than what's absolutely necessary. Hell, I just bough razors for the first time in months. 

        

I had a killer second semester in grad school, guys. I went to circus school and had an absolute blast, doing everything short of running away to join the circus. We did multi-character pieces, which if you're familiar with any of the tours I used to do back in Boise you'll understand that I felt very at home. I took saxophone lessons and piano lessons, both of which reminded me what it's like to learn something that you're not a professional about (aka: suck really hard at something that you feel like you should be good at because at this age you should really be good at everything, right?), which I think made me take bigger risks as a performer.

                                                 

My year-end evaluation culminated in notes about things I was cracking open and fierceness I was bringing into the room. I'm unsure I understand exactly what that means, but I feel things. You know, like a human.

I've been considering a lot lately the how I've changed over the last few years. This was brought on by my typical, boarder-line-debilitating scroll through social media. Specifically the "people you might know" field. Which I noticed was speckled with several people that I not only knew, but was sure that I had been Facebook friends with in the past.

So of course, as an insecure human being that is under the impression I am generally like-able, I spent an unfortunate amount of time in the throws of grief as to what I had done to so offend or accost these people that they would want to shut me out of their precious, wonderful, sought-after social media circle.

And then I realized that it's really none of my fucking business and my life got instantaneously better. It was remarkable. 

                        

      

Don't get me wrong, I'm still a little hurt by it, but over the past few years of my life I have concerned myself much less with being well-liked and become much more concerned with what I want to actually do (which has been a nothing-short-of-terrifying endeavor). I've come to the conclusion that while being well-liked is a perfectly worthy goal in life, I'd much rather it be a side effect to what it is I want To Do (TBD). 

The years I spent with the main goal of being well-like by people, or a group of people, or a company, or some sort of community, ended with a great deal of emotional and mental stress that ultimately ended in a lack of productivity on my part. That's the business side of it. The personal side of it is sadder and more hurtful to those close to me and taught me even more valuable lessons. As it turns out, being well-liked meant I kept my mouth shut when people may have preferred I speak.

It doesn't even begin to end there. There were people and groups of people that I deemed "shouldn't" like me anymore because of some social stigma/standard about which I became obsessively paranoid and so I decided the "polite" (what the fuck? Where do I come up with this shit?) thing to do was to remove myself from their lives as much as possible. If anyone's ever lived in a community of any sort before, whether a big city or a small town, you know how impossible this is to do. It's also just so massively awkward I can't believe we didn't all end up laughing until we were in stitches. It wasn't funny though.

A big draw to my current grad program for me was a sort of nerdy/boredom research stumble. I google/news searched the name of my program and came across pages and pages of reviews for shows currently or recently running in Philadelphia that were either involving if not completely and independently produced by recent grads of the program (the program has only been going since 2013, so there's not really any option other than a recent grad). Upon my skype interview with the program director one of the things he said to me that graduates from the program know what kind of work they want to make. As someone who has always joyfully hopped on board with the latest project (arguably, I've elbowed my way into my fair few projects...) this was immensely appealing to me.

A year in and I'm still not sure what kind of work I want to make, but I'm more certain every day of what work I don't want to make. I gain new tools every day. I am confident in a mode of physical story telling that I simply didn't know existed until a few months ago and I'm slowly steeping into a community that is thrilled I'm here. 

I composed my first song. My first three songs, actually. I held a handstand. I broke my record for running a mile. Three times. I yogaed the shit out of lots of yogas. My classmates are puppeteers and modern dancers and clowns and directors and playwrights and twenty-three and fifty-four and acrobats and teachers and musicians. 

       

  

I work at a coffee shop. I walk a lot. I'm looking into continuing circus school lessons over the summer. I'm going to buy a piano. I'm reading. I bought a bicycle I have a big old crush on.

       

So to those who have unfriended me, I hope you're not reading this. Not because I don't want you to know my thoughts - actually I hope I have so little to do with your life that you'd never even consider checking in. I hope I was part of some Spring cleaning of your social media accounts. And to those who I've "politely backed away from", I got nothing. Only speculation.

I still have none of the answers. I just feel a whole lot more comfortable not knowing. I'm thrilled to do things and not be sure if it's right. Like transposing songs. Or improvising a song as a character. Or get lost in Center City. I've finally put into practice my love of failure. Sometimes. 

My first post-semester evaluation I was criticized for "being such a good student". My desire to "do well" or "do it right" was crippling in that first semester. I feel like I wanted to do everything in my life so well, or so right, that I never contemplated whether it was something I wanted to do. Like my entire life goal was just for everyone I knew to say, "Good job!"

New things are afoot. Or abreast... Heh.

I will update you as infrequently and unexpectedly as you have come to know me.

                         

    

For Rent: A Craigslist Photo Ode of Confusion.

I've been new in town for a full two months now. I took a very strange and giant trust fall into this city and so far it has graciously supported me. Catch is a little too strong of a word, but it's rather floating me down quite slowly and generously and hopefully, eventually, solidly on my feet. I'm in my second sublet, which is actually back to the first house I was crashing in (remember Murphy?) and it's wonderful. My roommates are absolutely delightful. They cook delicious meals, I bake cookies, we drink wine, we quietly watch mindless TV, I disappear into my room.

THIS guy. Don't let his distinguished brow fool you. He's young and full of trouble.

I've been hunting for a place to call ours since I arrived (as there's a mere NINE DAYS until my fierce, wild, crazy, farmland dwelling, partner in crime arrives to the big city for some epic culture shock, true adventure and reuniting). Four people is a lot to have in a two bedroom and those of you who know me know I love to socialize almost as much as I love disappearing without a trace. Which is leading me here:

My life has been an endless barrage of "For Rent" signs and un-returned phone calls.

Apartment hunting in a new place comes with it's own set of challenges. Not knowing specific neighborhoods, judging which places are okay to go and view by yourself (if you're wondering: None of them. None of them are okay to look at by yourself. Just take someone with you. Don't be an idiot.), figuring out what utilities cost, and really, just finding what's available. I've of course turned to our lady patron saint of finding weird shit: Craigslist.

May she smile upon your search.

There's another site called PadMapper that was recommended to me upon moving here. In all honesty, I've had less luck with returned phone calls and e-mails on PadMapper than through Craigslist, and that's saying something. Over the last two months I have marveled over pictures of apartments on Criagslist that are posted, I thought, to entice me to want to live somewhere. I'm beginning to think they're posted as part of a new drinking game that I was unaware of (much like I've just recently found out what "Netflix and Chill" is thanks to one of my younger MFA cohort. I just can't keep up). In any case, I thought I'd share some of my favorite Craigslist and PadMapper apartment photos, or at least their "types".

The ol' Same shot, slight change:

See, such a bright home!

Oh! But also on "tree-lined" street!

Nothing says, "You'll love this place." More than, "I took extra time to tweak the lighting settings on my iPhone editor when I posted this.

This is either, "I do not understand how to internet" or, "I iz Robot Spamming. Money transfer direct to this account."

ALSO ALL CAPITOL LETTERS MEANS TRUTH IS HAPPENING HERE BUY THE THING WITH THE STUFF AND RENTING FOR LOW MONEY LARGE SPACE GREAT LOCATION LOCATION LOCATION!!!!!

 #NoFilter. Perfect Setting for #ManicPixieGirl. If you didn't #WakeUpLikeThis don't apply.

Perfect new home for your mug of perfectly steeped tea, Anthropolgie dishes, and sheer, over-sized white button down.

The blatant fish eye lens photos. One of my favorites.

This place is so tiny, you wouldn't believe it. Seriously. You couldn't believe it. Come and see it so we can prove how tiny this place is. Also: bring pepper spray and don't expect closets.

The tiniest blurriest of photos, helping no one figure out if this is the right apartment for them.

Sigh. This is just... but... never mind. Fuck you man.

Bro, the landlord doesn't even care what you do here! We didn't even have to clean when he took photos for the Craigslist ad! They'll let ANYONE live here! Beers and college and bros and weird things growing everywhere!

Making the least amount of sense:

It's really difficult to take pictures and transfer them to the internet, but we took the time to make a rudimentary emoji so you know we're as disappointed as you are. lolz. call 4 deets.

When this is the only photo:

WHAT ELSE COULD YOU POSSIBLY WANT?!?! YOU CAN EVEN SLEEP IN THIS ROOM! YOU JUST HAVE TO WANT IT BAD ENOUGH! DO YOU WANT IT?!?! DO YOU!? WASH AND DRY!

So while I continue to call and leave messages that go unreturned, while I see the same place I called about advertised and re-advertised it's hard for me to think that a small part of the property managers in this city aren't playing a bit of a trick on the new girl. There are things called brokers here, which I wouldn't have to pay, but I can't seem to get them to call me back either (I can only assume this is because I'm not willing to pay over four digits for a place to live. In my defense, I'm absolutely willing to live in a place that's falling apart).

I'll keep you updated. Adventure continues.

Me Without You

I spent the majority of my fifteen years in back home carving a place out for myself. Creating context for me. Who I was in relation to this person, or in relation to such a company, or in relation to "X" institution. I feel like I then spent my last two years in there unwittingly ripping that context apart while figuring out which parts of my hometown relied on the context as much as I had and which ones actually just wanted me around. It was a messy and in all honesty, probably a very unfair way to go about things, but effective.

That does not exist here. If it does, it's in the very early stages and no one cares. It's strange being pulled out of context. I reach back often, sending messages to loved ones back home, reminding myself that I have a name and am a human that means something to people somewhere. It's strange in a professional sense, which I expected. I have worked for many years to establish my reputation as a hard working artist in a specific community, that no one knows or cares about here. It's flat out scary in a personal context. If I had a heart attack in the middle of this train, who would care? Would anyone call 911? Who would come to visit me in the hospital? Who would drive me home?

A door I walked by every day on my way to class until I moved to another sublet. I do, thank you door, I don't need your die coaching.

It's healthy in an annoying way. Like when I tried to actually eat five servings of vegetables a day for a month (very VERY unsuccessfully, in case you're interested). My cohort is wonderful, but no matter how many hours a day you spend with someone, it's no replacement for years of working side by side. Or hours spent discussing future projects. Or being able to communicate an idea with someone with three words and four sounds because you know each other that well.

It's also no replacement for being nervous to turn a corner and see someone you don't want to talk to. Or to wonder if you said or did something to make a whole company ostracize you because they never call you for work anymore. 

Blank Slate.

I still specialize in feeling lonely in a room full of people. I'm working on branching out a little faster. I'm working on not holing up in my room and actually carrying on conversations with people around me, awkward as I can be. I'm working on relinquishing a bit of control here and there. I'm working on taking ownership of space and time. I'm working on a little more exposure of my soft bits and a little more understanding of my more sharper ones.

I've been told the goal of our degree is to make us experts at space and rhythm. We spent a day at the beach studying both. It was pretty alright.

Six weeks has flown by. There's only ten left in my first semester. I'm devouring each second.

Journey to Groceries

There's something called a "Super Fresh" not far from where I'm staying. It's okay as a grocery store, but has apparently recently been bought out so they're not re-stocking anything. It's pathetic. It depresses me to go in there and it's actually quite a little trek from where I am, so I sort of swore off of the Super Fresh train.
On a Sunday just over three weeks into my move to the big city, I decided I had earned a day confined to my bedroom Netflix-ing my life away.

I had delusions of making it to a real grocery store but all I really REALLY needed was milk, because Mac and Cheese.

Dear Mother sent me four of these and various other food products because she in convinced I am starving. Everyone: Please continue telling my Mother I am starving.

So I knit and Netflix-ed and promptly realized it was past 4 PM and I should maybe consider leaving the house at some point. I Yelped the closest grocery stores (of which there were several, but I have recently noticed that a city's idea of a "grocery store" is similar to my idea of a "gas station"). Ultimately, I found something called a "Save-A-Lot" that was about a six minute walk from my gracious hosts abode.

I mean, c'mon, Save-A-Lot? How could it not be great? I like many things that include the word "Lot" Big Lots, back home is slightly quirky, but has some great things. Sir Mix A Lot? I mean, of course. Dye Lots? Has to do with yarn and is very useful, so of course I like it. Parking Lots? Sure. They're alright.

Couldn't possibly just be a coincidence, right?

I set out on my adventure and roughly three blocks from home base, I found myself surrounded by several very large, abandoned warehouses and came across this:

Because sometimes you just gotta burn a bunch of shit on the sidewalk.

So that's cool. Just a fire in the middle of the sidewalk. Saturday night public bonfire, perhaps? Whatever, I'm sure the had permits (I'm certain they didn't) or a good reason (disposing of crime evidence? a murder weapon? a BODY?!?) I'm sure they fire department came and put it out (I haven't seen or heard a fire truck since I've been out here. I'm beginning to think they're still horse drawn out here).

 Not even a block farther down the road was the mystical land called Save-A-Lot, whose entrance was surrounded by bars. You could get through the bars, but not easily. Looking back on it, I think they were placed that way to keep people from stealing their carts (they're VERY serious about keeping all their carts) but when I squeezed through them at the time I contemplated how one had to be truly hungry to shop here. A principle concept probably directly out of line with Sir Mix A Lot's teachings (yeah, I said his teachings. Like he's booty-prophet or something), whom I had assumed would have something to do with this place...

As far as the content of the store goes, it was really quite something. I'm uncertain if any of it had passed any sort of FDA exam. The ingredient lists for most everything were longer than my arm and from a brand that I had never seen. Isles had one or two things listed as being in them and were full of anything but. Although, some form of coffee or instant coffee could be found in every isle. In short: This place was magical. And so. cheap.

I didn't take pictures of the store because I was so entranced. If you would like to experience the ultimate anti-climax, you're welcome Google Earth link here.

I can't say I'll be returning to the Save-A-Lot anytime soon, as I don't think I could sustain a functioning, highly physical, active body off of it's goods for long, but as I was passing the skate park, classically full of pre-teen boys that reeked of weed and swore almost as eloquently as my mother does, I was grateful for the experience. It was also a place that I might as well have been screaming to everyone, "HEY! I DON'T BELONG HERE! I ABSOLUTELY DON'T BELONG IN HERE RIGHT NOW!"

So the adventure continues. Country bumpkin-ing. One foot in front of the other. Slowly but surely. And victoriously:

Yes. Shameless Mac and Cheese in bed selfie. And yes. 1 box=1 serving.