Can you dig it?
Look at these beautiful shoes.
Seriously. Look at them. They’re Doc Martens. I just ordered them on Friday.
I haven’t owned a pair of Docs since college. And they have steel toes, which I have never had in a pair of boots, never having been in a situation where I urgently needed to kick anything hard or worry about protecting my delicate little piggies. So why am I eagerly awaiting their arrival now? Simple: because later this year, I am going to be spending a week on an archaeological dig, a place where one is very likely to drop, trip over, step on, or stumble into something hard and heavy. Steel-toed boots mandatory.
An archaeological dig? you ask. Really?
Yes, really!
If you’ve been reading this blog a while, you’ve probably noticed that I love history — the older, the better. I also know an archaeologist who’s politely let me buttonhole him at parties for years to hear about digging up amazing things. When I last spoke to him, he mentioned a phrase I’d never heard before: “field school.” It turns out that a lot of digs actively welcome volunteers and students to help them with the hard work of pulling history out of holes in the ground. Yes, you pay for the privilege of doing heavy labor for them, but in exchange you get to learn the basics of excavation while learning about the era you’re digging up (and, if you’re a student, earning academic credit). It sounded like a damn fine way to spend a vacation: going somewhere interesting, learning something new, and — let’s face it — having an excuse to buy shoes. So I went looking for a field school that would get me somewhere I’d like to go while staying within my vacation budget. And lo, I found one — in, of all places, northern England. To be precise, in the city of York.
The thing about York is that it’s been continuously inhabited for thousands of years. The British tribes already had a nice little settlement going when the Romans showed up in 71CE and built an army camp there. When the Romans left, the Angles (as in Anglo-Saxons) showed up. Then the Vikings came. And so forth, up to the present day. The city is a layer cake of history, and whenever anyone does any major construction, they’re required to do an archaeological dig first.
Right now there’s an urban renewal project going on in a section of the city called Hungate. It’s a big project — housing, shops, green space, the whole mixed-use bag — which means a big dig. In fact, the Hungate dig is the biggest ever to be held in York, at least according to the Dig Hungate web site. It’s been going on since 2007 and will continue through 2011. And in the summers, volunteers can show up for a week or two at a time and stay in the local university’s housing. That’s what I’ll be doing.
For roughly $425, I get a week of daily seminars and lectures, basic dig training, the occasional guided tour of the dig, and cheap lodging with kitchen privileges. My other expenses, besides food and sunscreen, will be airfare to and from the UK and a train ticket to and from York, which has no airport of its own. And I have enough frequent flyer miles to cover half my airfare. (More on budget travel at another time.) In short, everything is coming together to make it feasible for me to go back to England (which I love), see part of the country that’s new to me, satisfy both my history jones and my curiosity about archaeology, and maybe even dig up something fascinating.
I have no idea what I might find. I could end up digging among the Vikings or Romans, or I could be exhuming an 18th century slum. Maybe I’ll find a pipe, or dinnerware, or an arrowhead. Or maybe I’ll find a toilet.
Filed under progress, Uncategorized | Comments (7)Hanging
I spent a lot of quality time over the weekend mounting a dozen photos on black foamcore. The prints ranged in size from 8×10 all the way up to 20×30; when I was done and stood them up around the room to look them over en masse, they seemed very large and impressive indeed.
Then I took them to Olive and hung them, with a lot of help from Jerry, one of the owners (and a little “assistance” from his hyperactive puppy). They looked pretty darn small on a very wide wall two stories high. Nonetheless, once they were all hanging and the lights adjusted accordingly, I stepped behind the bar to get the full effect, and all of a sudden it hit me: people are going to see these photos. Lots of people — it’s a busy bar. And some of them might even buy one.
I finished hanging everything at around 3pm. A few hours later, just after the bar opened, a friend who’d stopped in for a cocktail texted me to let me know that someone there was vocally admiring my photos and checking out the price list.
If I can sell just one of the larger prints, it’ll cover what I’ve spent on supplies for this show. Cautiously optimistic!
Filed under progress | Comment (0)The joy of fear
You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. … You must do the thing you think you cannot do. – Eleanor Roosevelt
***
This quote is a touchstone for me; my main intention in starting this blog was to chronicle my attempts to follow Eleanor Roosevelt’s advice and thereby become a stronger, braver, more confident version of myself. I’ve mentioned this quote to dozens of people over the years, and almost every time, the person I’m talking to brings up a time that s/he “felt the fear and did it anyway.” This week, though, two very different people who have never met each other responded to the quote in a very different, and (to me, at least) unusual way: both said that they were so stubborn and determined that they couldn’t remember ever thinking anything was beyond them as long as they tried hard enough.
I have to admit that I found this completely incomprehensible. Never felt intimidated or overwhelmed? Never endured insecurity or self-doubt? Never suspected they’d bitten off more than they could chew? Never worried about what other people would think or how they might react? Never feared the repercussions of going against the crowd? Never hesitated, even briefly, to say, “I wonder if this is going to work out”?
Never? Not even once?
That seems more than impossible to me; it seems superhuman.
But the flip side — being ruled by doubt — seems equally impossible. I confess that I’ve certainly hung back, kept quiet, delayed, denied, avoided, procrastinated, made excuses, taken the path of least resistance, or simply gone along with the crowd from time to time. The axiom about how the nail that sticks up gets hammered down rings all too true for me some days. Let’s face it: it’s a lot easier, plain and simple, not to do the things you think you can’t do.
But it’s also not as satisfying.
There’s joy in looking fear in the face. In standing up for yourself. In defending someone else. In risking rejection. In entering competition. In challenging conventional wisdom. In claiming authority. In setting boundaries. In examining your preconceptions. In defying your prejudices. In redefining your priorities. In confronting your phobias. In speaking your mind, as activist Maggie Kuhn said, “even if your voice shakes.”
Fear — not terror, but a healthy concern for consequences — is part of the human condition. It’s normal to think you can’t do something. It’s also normal to go ahead and give it a shot anyhow.
This week, find something you didn’t think you could do, and then do it. And come back here and tell me about it.
Filed under fears, progress, quotes, triumphs, Uncategorized | Comment (0)In which I play in traffic
Several years ago, a friend passed her old mountain bike on to me. I was very excited at first. I imagined zipping nimbly around like the people in Amsterdam who commute merrily hither and thither on their beater bikes. I bought padded bike shorts (because I thoroughly approve of any sport for which my own natural padding is inadequate). I even starting thinking about getting panniers, or at least a basket, in which I pictured myself bringing home a baguette and a bouquet of flowers or something equally charming.
Then I realized 2 things:
- Although my neighborhood is fairly flat, San Francisco has some very big hills. And I am somewhat lazy.
- Although San Francisco has a lot of bicyclists and bike lanes, the cars are bigger and more numerous. And I am terrified of getting doored, clipped, or just plain mown down.
As a result, I didn’t ride nearly as much as I thought I would. Yes, I downloaded the SF Bike Map, which not only shows all the official bike routes, but color-codes every street in the city to indicate how steep it is (this is also very useful for walking). I used it to help me figure out where to pedal in my own ‘hood and how to get to the bike paths in Golden Gate Park with minimal risk, but I didn’t dare venture farther.
Until today!
I figured that if I was going to confront my fear of riding on city streets, I should do it on Sunday, when traffic is light, and in the nice, flat, comparatively bike-friendly Mission District. So I rode my bike a few blocks to a bus stop, where I loaded it onto the handy-dandy bike rack Muni provides on the front of its buses. The bus took me up and over the ridge that runs through the center of town. I got off at 18th Street and Valencia. And then I rolled up my jeans, strapped on my helmet, and rode merrily along bike lanes and side streets until I got to Precita Park, where a bunch of street food vendors were dishing it up for a small crowd and a film crew from the Food Network.
I rewarded myself for my courage with a lavender creme brulee and a grilled Gruyere sandwich with onion/fennel/bacon jam before heading home again. Gotta keep up my strength.
Filed under fears, progress, triumphs | Comments (2)The only thing wrong with you
For many, many years, I thought that there was something wrong with me, something that everyone could see but me. I was never quite sure what it was, though. I struggled to fix what I could and hide what I couldn’t fix, and I was either apologetic or defensive about the things I could neither change nor conceal.
I knew, intellectually, that being myself would be a hell of a lot easier than always trying to be someone else. But emotionally, I didn’t feel like I had a choice. Because I had the nagging sense that something about me was fundamentally unlikeable, I was afraid people would reject my true self. Yet despite all my attempts to present only the parts of myself most likely to please the person I was with at the time, I could never be sure if anyone actually liked me. If I stopped fixing and hiding and doing my chameleon routine for even a second, people would immediately realize that the picture on the box didn’t match the contents. And nobody likes being misled.
Trying to appeal to everyone and offend no one is one hell of a double bind. Sisyphus himself would understand what an endless task it is.
One day, though, out of nowhere, I had a remarkable idea: Perhaps the only thing wrong with me is…the idea that something is wrong with me. And I thought, you know, why not behave as though that’s true and see what happens?
It’s such a novel notion that I can’t always hang on to it. To be honest, I have to watch myself constantly to keep from slipping back into the belief that I’m not “good enough” just as I am. If I’m an acquired taste, I worry — despite plenty of evidence to the contrary — that perhaps no one will acquire it.
And yet the little green shoots of the idea keep growing. Maybe the things about me that I’ve thought of as flaws are really just facts, neither good nor bad. And maybe instead of trying to compensate or apologize for them, I should try embracing them.
If I believe that, then I don’t need to fix myself or improve myself, because I’m not broken or inadequate in the first place. I just have to reveal my true self, trusting that while I’m not to everyone’s tastes, I also don’t have to be.
What do you think?
Filed under progress, Uncategorized | Comments (2)