Bringing it on home.

Hey team.  I suck at blogging.  Bleh.  So, now that that's out of the way, we shall move on.

Due to one of my best friend's pleading, her New Year's Resolutions, and her recent move to Blogger (from her ridiculous Xanga.  Psh.) I have re-established my want to blog more.  That One Cute Muffin also sent me a camera for a VERY belated Christmas present, in order to facilitate better use of my Blog.  So here we are.  If you would like to know more about this fantastically AMAZING friend (that I have known for 17 years!)  then click here.  Thanks, my Katy Rose for encouraging me, and loving me even though I suck at keeping you posted on my new life.  Coincidentally, her mother, Ms. Sue "Flash" Roweton originally got me started on blogging.  The World Wide Web owes a lot to these two women- they are the reason I'm here.  On Blogger.  Not the world.  That would be awkward.

I am going to take a leaf out of her book, and try not to ramble.

I've moved in to a new apartment through the Portland Festival Ballet.  It is a cool one bedroom, with a loft above the kitchen, and get this. It has a spiral staircase.  It has been on my list of life goals to have a spiral staircase in an apartment.  So that's a wonderfully convenient checkmark to get as well as getting a great new apartment.  And a cool new roommate.  

Gentry is from Rhode Island, but has lived all over. He's studying at the Ballet with me, and we're getting along well.  Two kindred spirits.  Except we're very different.  So just two spirits really.  Also, his dad is Jim Fielder.  The bass player from Blood, Sweat, and Tears.  So, all you music nerds (Katy, Sue, etc.) that's my roommate's dad.  Yeah.  It's cool.

Lydia came and saw me!  She was here for The Justice Conference.  Click on the link to learn more about how she's going to save the world.  God blessed me with a strong family of women that taught me well as I grew up.  She always serves as a font of happiness and peace when we get together.  I have definitely missed her after I got a small taste of love, but I'm happier as well.  She makes me think a lot.

                                                             She took a picture.

                                                            But she didn't want to go.

And, lastly, I have written the short story I am going to workshop for my Creative Writing class I am currently taking called The Game of Life.  If anyone would like to read it, I would love that.  Give me your feedback.  Because I'm going to be a dancer, not a writer, and I can take any critiques you got.

Send me an email, and I will send it back to you.  Or Facebook me.  Or call me.  Or whatever.  We have about 60 absolutely foolproof, simple, fast, convenient ways to contact each other.  So why do we all feel disconnected from each other?  Whoa. Deep.

Stop. Breathe. Life is Beautiful.

Here we are people. January 25.  Once I again, I realize I have not posted for a while, but contrary to last time, I will not be apologizing.  So there.  I just didn't.  Even thought I wanted to, and tried to, and thought about.  But the road to an unwritten blog is littered with coulda, woulda, tried-tas.  But I'm here now.

So a little update on the life.  We started our semester out January 3rd, but I got the first week of January off to return home and see the family.  I also used that time to get my MSU affairs in order.  I did so enjoy going home.  It is nice to have a place where I am always wanted, and regardless of the product, my hard work is always met with profound enthusiasm and wonder.

I will now digress to a small anecdote about my work.  I now have two jobs.  One at Portland Dancewear, from which I use my payment to buy dance clothes, and pay for gas. The real money maker is as a Host at Gustav's German Pub and Grill.  My manager there requested that I stay to work the week after Christmas, which started the 2 days after the completion of the Portland Festival Ballet's Nutcracker. (Click here to check out where I am dancing.) But when the schedule was finally released, I found that I was not on the schedule at all.  Well, awesome.  I had already purchased tickets for the first week of January, and while I could have maybe finagled a change in flights, it was a lot of hassle.  So, what did I do?  I groveled and begged for any shifts that my coworkers were willing to cough up.  I ended up getting 6 in 4 days, which was also the way I was able to afford to go home, while finding myself in the inevitable student slump of finances that happens at the end of every semester, coinciding with the winter holidays, and the summer break.  Awesome.  MSU, you need to figure out a different way to do Financial Aid dispersal.  Be that as it may, I got shifts, made money, and flew home; my family kindly pushed back our Christmas traditions for my late arrival.  We did my grandmother's Christmas on the 1st, the day I flew in, and my personal family's Christmas on the morning of the 2nd.  My entire family was able to come, which I can't remember happening for a few years.  What a blessing.  Also, my extended family (my Great-aunt [the daughter of my Great-grandmother]'s side all came over as well, which put almost 40 people in the house.  It was very pleasant.  Reminded me of my childhood.  This is where I would #family drama if this were twitter.  Which it is not. Once again- I digress.

I had three very fruitful conversations with three of my artistic mentors.  Dr. Chris Thompson, Ms. Jana Anderson, and Mrs. Ashley Paige Romines.  They all three offered me good advice for when I returned to the hair pulling insanity that I turn my ballet training into.  If you three read this. I'm trying.  But you know me, and I am hard on myself.  The gist of these conversations was that I can just be here.  I can just be in Portland having experiences.  I don't have to be firguring out every step I'm going to take over the next 5 years, and just train.  With no pressure of succeeding or failing.  Neither of those exist here.  Which is a tree that is extremely difficult to see in the forest that is Ballet.  I get so hurt from ballet because I want it very badly.  And it continuously seems like I don't have what it takes to get to where I have to be to do what I have to do to get the job that I want to finally be able to create on stage.  But there's no faking it in ballet.  And there's no skipping steps.  One cannot skip steps , because each step is necessary in the progression of ballet technique.  And I'm late. Blech.

My two last notes are: I hate learning French online.  I would like it if I were in a classroom, with a teacher, and the reinforcement that comes with face-to-face learning.  But I'm not, and it is making me resent the language.

And watch this video.  I am addicted.  This is the exact kind of dancing I want to do, and have forever to go until I can do it.

But it is an image of where I want to go.

For now, I'm using this mantra-

Stop.
Breathe.
Life is Beautiful.
I want to do this.
I can do this.

The Blogging Suckfest

Alright people.  I know what everyone's thinking.  You're thinking "Wow, Richard really sucks at blogging.  He must have fallen victim to the Blogging Suckfest."  Well here I am dragging myself out of said suckfest, and the Blogging Nazi's that think I should be blogging more often than I am, which is to say more than once every 2 months, can back off.  Haters.  I am terming the Blogging Suckfest as the delusion that something important must happen for one to blog.  My friend Sue Roweton is particularly accomplished at making all of her posts very interesting, while not all are life changing from her perspective.  Or so it seems, Sue.  I won't presume to make definitive statements on here, for fear of starting a blogging war.  More on that in another post.  The Blogging Suckfest, or BS for the intents and purposes of this post, make blogging seem like a chore, rather than a simple draining of your mind through the rapidly depressed type pad of my MacBook.  The BS is dangerous.  Watch out for it.  It disguises itself as anything. Your job, your hair, your new book, your family, your friends, coffee, sleep, exhaustion, fractured metatarsals.  Anything.  So that is what I was dealing with.

Now that that's out of the way.  Portland has been crazy.  Or rather I guess it hasn't been crazy, rather I have just been crazy.  Neuroticism runs rampant here, and it seems to have jumped on my wagon as soon as I left the prairie behind. (For more information see post #2 [which is from September {so in turn see the first paragraph of this blog post}])

Small plug, I am heading into tech week for The Nutcracker at the Portland Festival Ballet.  Click on it, to be taken to the site and educate yourself on where I am, and the people that are fostering my creative development.

So, what have I been doing here. Dancing. A lot. Duh, but more than that.  Mr. Magnus, my ballet master and basically life coach, has really tried to instill in his trainees that to not only be a good dancer, but to become an artist, you have to know who you are.  You have to have an idea of who you are as a person, in the turest mind of yourself, to be able to stand and show an audience who you are as a character.  And also the auditioners that I will be making myself ultimately vulnerable to as I dance my little booty of for jobs in the coming years.  The more he said this to me, and the more it sunk it, I realize that that is what my teachers at Missouri State are teaching me as well.  It just took me in a pair of booty shorts, trying to stand in tendue derriere (which is much harder than it looks thank you very much), being told off by Mr. Magnus, 2,000 miles from home to realize it.  But realize it I did, none-the-less.

I was then struck with a new problem, which is actually an old problem given a label.

I don't know who I am.

I thought I did, but I didn't really like the man he was becoming.  So I did some evaluating and made some changes that weren't hard to make, but were sometimes hard to keep to. The newer me was much calmer about things, and much less hard on himself.   But I am still continuously told that I am too hard on myself.  If I don't hold myself to the highest standards, though, how will people see the best of me?

I think this dilemma also stems from the fact that I don't know who I want to be. I know what I want to do, and I know how to get there, because I'm doing it right now, but I don't know who I want to be while doing it.  It's making me doubt many things, and forget about many others.

So, right now I am on the ultimate search anew. I'm not worried... much, I just wish it was a little clearer.

I WILL be writing again soon, so don't forget my blog.  This was going to be  an update on what I've been doing. But it has become a divulging of my soul in what I have found that I need to discover.

Whoa. That was profound.  Reread that last sentence, and you'll see what I see.

Oh, The Place I Will Go...

Alright people.  I suck at keeping myself up with things like this.  But here we are.  I think at least making it within the same rough time period is going to be an accomplishment here at the beginning.  So, let's get everyone caught up to the same place that the rest of the book club is at.

The last post happened the day before I started out on the drive I would soon learn is absolutely HELLATIOUS when done alone.  Who knew that 33 hours was a crazy long drive to do by your lonesome? Oh. Wait. Err-body knew that.  Except for this dumb-ass.  Alright. Alright. I made it blah blah blah; I had a lot of time to think on my own blah, blah, blah.  Things happened and stuff got done.  I'll give some of the highlights.

After making a mad dash to have my oil changed as early as possible putting me two hours behind when I thought I would leave, I had basically 2/3 of my life packed into my lovely maroon Element, Alexander Michael [which if you have never driven in my car with me, is pronounced "Alec-sahnder Meech-i-ell"]; and of course I forgot to take a picture of  it because I am not a linear thinker all the time. But I had my send off with Rachel, my oldest sister- Hollaback Girl!- and headed to Bolivar to hug my other sister, Lydia, one last time as we had agreed I would do the night before.  I also had a surprise in mind.

 This is what greeted me.  Lydia had delved in to her very low funds, as all of us are finding ourselves these days, and had proceeded to get me everything I needed for a roadtrip, once more demonstrating the wonderfully clairvoyant ability she inherited from my mother in the gift of giving. I'm amazed by the way she can just know what to give and find joy in it all the freaking time.  I'm trying to emulate, but we are two very different people.  So there we are.

I then proceeded to surprise my mother at Bolivar High School.  We had one of our classic discussions that while supposed to last 10 minutes ends up being and hour and a half, and no one gives a damn because we needed it.  Tears, and encouragement, and one last hug that left mascara on my cerulean jacket that I didn't even care was there.

And not to be left out, one side track, my brother and lovely sister, Jonathan and Jayme, gave me a send off of equivalent happiness the weekend before.  Jayme and I worked together to surprise Jonathan for his Birthday with ME! (28, you damn old geezer. Where's your cane?) We had an extremely fun weekend that was fraught with giggles, hearty chuckles, and my distinctive silent laughter that everyone always thinks is so funny until I can't breathe.  I had so much good food there that I am also trying to gain Jayme's ability to make even an eater like me enjoy Vegetarian Time!

I thought one last glimpse of the town Court House would be appropriate, and sentimental without being weird...

So, I'm on the road. Finally.  I had consulted multiple different map services to see which way would be best.  They all suggested up through Nebraska, through Wyoming, Utah, and Idaho to then cross Oregon.  Well, I don't know if everyone in the whole blessed world knows this, but I frickin' LOVE mountains.  And I was not passing up a chance to be this close without getting up close an personal.  Of course, that was before I set out exactly 4 and half hours after I had planned.

I make it to Iowa without incident, and then, if everyone remembers the shit storm analogy, it all started again.  So I-5 is closed in a couple different sections.  But this is Iowa. So there are no other options.  But I am still doing fine.  Until I get to the last possible chance for exit, and I take it expecting a detour.  I get up the ramp, and the guy looks right in to my eyes.  So, naturally I use the universal sign language I am fluent in and pointed down both directions with my eyebrows raised.  What does the guy do? He shrugs.  HE SHRUGS! So, in my head I'm like "What the hell? If you don't know where the hell I'm supposed to go, and I sure as hell don't know where to go, then where the hell am I supposed to go? So I choose the right after much deliberation and two U-turns, and catching a couple words of the directions he was giving another guy.  Literally I heard "left, down, go." But in my head that was a full on invitation to head on.  Idiot. I'm an idiot.

This leads to two hours driving around in SW Iowa.  I find myself on three different gravel roads in the middle of Corn fields.  Very far cry from the Interstate that I knew was safe.  And paved.  But ce' la vie. I finally break down when I have driven around the same 10 mile radius twice and have been instructed by my trusty, and by trusty I mean crazy, GPS Patricia with an English Accent (except when she's on American accent, then she's Amanda- and here's a little tid bit: Patricia is a BITCH!)  to go down a road that has a sign "This is a Type B impassable road.  Enter at your own risk." And I was absolutely like "HAIL NAH!" So I pulled this terrible K turn that put my back bumper in the corn and zoomed out.  I decided to call 911 in desperation.  She used my phone to track me, and gave me hurried instructions because it was 911 and they were busy. Duh. I didn't understand a word she said except for the two towns she told me to make it to to find the next Interstate.  Also, during this call the original guy that I heard 3 words of his directions pulled up beside me and asked what I was going to do.  I told them to follow me with as much confidence as I could muster, and by the time I was pulling onto the Interstate, I was leading about 6 cars.  Needless to say I had made a lot of calls during this time.

Finally I am driving across Nebraska, which is not the most boring state I've ever been taken across, but it's not ranking very high.  So, now I'm 6 hours behind where I had thought I would be! That's a lot of time missed, and I'm starting to get tired.  I worked my best to stay awake, but inevitably lost like a loser in a room of glass cleaner, and after some counsel from my mother got a room at hotel that happened to be in a town that was having a giant car show, so the only room I could get was a King Size. There was a couch, and a full bathroom, and all these amenities that were completely wasted on me due to the fact that I was crashing there for 6 hours.  FML.. But the next morning I totally stuffed 4 pastries, 3 muffins, 2 rolls, a water bottle, and 2 and a half cups of coffee in every inconspicuous place to take with me.  Classy.  On the road again, I decide to forgo Denver, and view the mountains from afar.  I have a schedule to keep after all.  So Wyoming it is.

One thing I'll say for Utah- It's like a recession isn't even happening.  Everyone was driving GINORMOUS SUV's and gas was hella-expensive.  They also don't use 87 gas.  Only having driven for about 5 years, and granted I have done a ton of driving for a 20 year old guy (Thanks momma!) I had never encountered this problem before. It went from 85 to 88 to 92.  What the hell kind of intervals are those.  Oh well. I dug through my very stuffed car, found my manual, and it says 97 or higher.  Fine.  Doesn't matter that it is 20 cents more expensive.  Ugh.  And let's not even talk about the fact that choosing between the two different gas stations that were a block and half from each other took 30 minutes just to get across all the traffic. Yeah.  Utah- the environment is crying in your general direction right now...

But here I am.  Alive and kicking. Literally kicking. I am here for ballet after all.  And somehow I did the math wrong, or rather, Patricia did the math wrong, and I got here two hours earlier than I had thought was possible. HOORAY!  I will upload another post about the adventures I have had here so far.  It's gonna be good.  I am happy to say that I am missing Missouri.  There is something to the fact of knowing where everything is, and whether you can turn right on a red light or not... I've been saying yes. Even if it's not. Everybody else is doing it.  I think I'm safe... Let's hope, because no one is coming to bail me out...

Not According to the Plan

Alright.  So, I have been very slow in starting this blog. Well slow in my terms because I have been telling people I was going to start it since this summer- when I became obsessed with Sue Roweton's blog Life Moves Pretty Fast.  If you are not reading Sue's blog, start.  It is freaking hilarious/informative/and simply the thoughts of a good person.

What has now prompted me to write this blog is a giant amount of shit that just fell on my head.  Not literally, like a bird, but figuratively, like a giant shitstorm that I am caught in the middle of like a doughnut hole.  And I recognize that they are not terribly tragic circumstances, but it is life altering and I am having to make some difficult decisions that most 20 year olds do not have to make, especially on the career front.

So, what is this crazy problem, that has created a whirlwind of drama for Ricky F. Nebel, II?  Well this summer I was offered the amazing opportunity to dance at the Magnus Midwest Ballet Intensive.  Considering I only starting studying ballet seriously a year and a half ago, this seemed an amazing opportunity I could not have asked for.  But the first raindrops of shit from the ensuing storm began to fall, when I fractured one of my metatarsals in the first week, but was offered a spot to come to Portland and dance with the Portland Festival Ballet.

Fast forward three months, a whole lot of situations that at the time were terrible, and I am now choosing to deem funny, if not hilarious, and we find me having just finished my 'last' appointment with my Orthopedic Doctor, Dr. Hicks- who coincidentally is extremely cute.

I am told that I can either go start dancing if there's no pain, and if pain starts see what is available so I don't refracture, or jump the gun on nature and put a screw over the fracture now, meaning another 2-3 weeks of boot time and then dancing.  What we find is that this tall, strike that very tall, dancer has a fracture that has not completely calcified.  Which means it may not be safe to dance on for 8 hours a day.  Huh.  Well.  Awesome.  Considering I am planning on making the 32 hour drive tomorrow.  (I've been trying to figure out how to do it one day. For some reason I just can't fit those extra 8 hours into one...  Maybe I'll blog about it.)

But blah, blah, blah Ricky and his acting training have made him a crier.  Not a public crier.  Because I hate crying, but just a couple tears and a trembling lip ont he drive in my car, Alexander Michael.  I was just overwhelmed by the fact that nothing I had been planning had gone accordingly.  What the HELL!?  I had made an appointment to work with my amazing Voice Teacher Dr. Chris Thompson, who has, quite literally, changed my life absolutely.  He is a master of the no bull-shit, this is how it is, make it work, no feeling sorry for yourself, suck it up and be happy pep talks.  But his particular brand always makes you understand better what you were already thinking, he just puts it into words, and affirms that you are powerful, and beautiful, and worth effort.  If I ever become a teacher, I will try to emulate his ability to make me feel loved, even when he's kicking my ass.

So. My thoughts:

1. I'm going to go to Portland tomorrow.
2. I'm going to train as hard as I can, being as safe as I can.
3. I'm going to kick my own ass, and not let pity start seeping onto the wonderful canvas that is my mind
4. Love life, and the amazing gift I have been given, (i.e.- this amazing scholarship, salvation, a body, the ability to move, and cheesecake. [It's a gift everybody, start eating that shit up.])

So. Everything hasn't gone to plan.  I'll just change the plan.  I'm good at that right? RIGHT? Missouri has given me the most beautiful fall day as a send off.  My favorite kind of day.  The days that I dream about.  And I am going to do things that I have been dreaming about.  Life is my gift. Not death. I'm not a slayer.* My blog is going to be my candid thoughts on what I am thinking in my 20th year onward..  I don't care who reads it, I don't care what they think, I'm doing this for me.  Read, enjoy.  Or read, and hate it.  Because I'll be over here. Not caring.

*This reference is from Buffy.  If you have not watched and are in love, it is going to be a long road for you and this blog.