Leaving

I'm not looking forward to leaving tomorrow, yet I know real life must be taken up again, and with a vengeance.  Strangely enough, I enjoy these flights back to the past much more when things are going well in the real world, but to some extent, no one in my southern family life actually comprehends how my work really, well, works.  If I ever get to be in a commercial or a tv show or a movie, it will make so much more sense to everyone because that's a product they can see and experience, but most of what I do and how I do it is a big mystery.

Which is fine.  Everyone in my family is super nice about it, usually supportive, and if not supportive, never openly derisive, which is about as much as one can ask.  After all, lots of people work in professions their families cannot understand - quantum physics, for instance, or perhaps activism.  Regardless, coming home and visiting has been a delight, and easier without the lovely husband in tow.  He is great, but the pull between his expectations and the expectations of my family is often strenuous, and I can never quite win, so it's useful to make trips alone at times, just to help my powers of concentration.

This has been a particularly lovely trip, in part because the weather has been warm if rainy, and in part because I managed to spend so much time with my best friend, who is (no cold medicine or wine at work this time) the best.  Honestly, life would be much better if we could live next door to each other.

I also got to drive a Mazda Miata with the top down on a sunny day through the beautiful South Carolina low country, so that was amazing.

I saw a trillion things I want to write stories about, and I wonder if I will ever manage to DO it instead of thinking about it.  When I'm here I always want to record every word, every drawl, every nuance, and once I'm gone it's lost and I feel something missing but can't quite work out what it is.  I wonder if I'll ever have a chance to integrate these parts of me, the part that nods and smiles out of a deep loyalty and respect to the past and the part that shakes off the expectations of generations in order to be whoever it is I need to be?  Maybe if I could find a way to thread that impossibly small eye of the needle, I could write about it more.

Maybe I should stick to acting out the words of others and hope someone awesome writes a great play about it.