So I've been rolling this one over in my mind a fair bit in the past week, thinking about what I want out of life, what/how I want to be.

One thing I want is to hold on to my far-flung cadre of friends, the bigger Family I have that's grown by choices. I don't have any illusions about everyone all living together in one big happy hippy compound, or cutting a swath of stylish destruction as a king-hell gang of city-dwelling bohemians. No, people want to do their own things, and that's cool. I'm good with it. There are 31 flavors and more. Please sample them all and stick with whatever fits you the best for as long as it feels right.

What I'm more thinking about is keeping up the knitting, maintaining fresh contact information and some sense of What's Up with all these people I fucking love so much. Keeping up the process of running them into one another whenever possible, expanding the network when appropriate, etc. I don't want to sound like an ass, but I like being a part of an elite crew. I'm ambitious. It drags me down being around sad or needy or low-caliber individuals. You know the tune; Rise above, we're gonna rise above.

I was talking the other day with my Gypsy Princess roommate, about how she's always felt the lure of travel, the open road, adventure. And the more she thinks about it the more she wonders if the life of a rambling gypsy isn't but one of many possible outlets for her inner desires, maybe the easiest and best-practiced and ergo most alluring in a default fallback kind of way. Life tough? Go travlin'. That always gets the juices flowing. But maybe there's something more out there, something more substantial, another expression, a way of being that answers the same calling, but more creatively, substantively, sustainably.

It made me wonder about how fired up I got being back in NYC, if there isn't something similar at work in my psyche. Not that I'd ever consider denying myself the joys of The City -- any more than she'd consider giving up travel -- but that feels like a thread worth tugging on. Unraveling my various rationalizations, it occurs to me that one reason I feel so comfortable in New York is that I can be as Big as I want there and nobody will necessarily notice. Out here in the HC -- and in a different way in SF -- letting the full flower of my being bloom would turn a few heads, at the very least, and I'm not 100% comfortable with that.

Which runs into the fact of my ambition like a wood-chipper. Cognitive dissonance. Look at me. Don't look at me! No, wait, look at me! Yeah.

So, in the continuing spirit of Owning My Shit, and also following the philosopher's advice that Beliefs are Habits of Action, I think I have to intentionally put myself into the spotlight a bit more, if for no other reason than to get comfortable with that as my ongoing role in life. The truth is I love being a center of attention. I'm a fucking Ham and everyone knows it. I just need to get over and/or embrace my inner artist, quit being so worried about always being a success and never being a jackass. Worry takes one out of the game, and it's who dares wins. Fortune favors the bold.

Well, I'm descending into catchphrase hell now so I'll pull up. It was a lovely Thanksgiving, Mom and Sister coming to me for a good break from their routines. December promises to be fun, with some travel back up to Oregon in the cards. I'm hoping to get some serious Time Off to decompress and then dig into some personal projects.