Somebody almost walked off with all of my stuff…

Honest to God! Somebody almost ran with all of my stuff…

Somebody almost ran off with all of my stuff

                                                                                       Ntozake Shange
                                                                                        For colored girls..

To say that I’m functioning on less sleep is an understatement. Now that I’m a new mother, I feel like the synapses in my brain are not quite firing right, you know like Luther’s curl neeever quite curled right…but I digress. It’s easy for me to have a thought that quickly leaves for a vacation in the land of no return. This day was no different, and yet it was…

I was headed to do a gig. A gig that didn’t sit right with me. It wasn’t bad, just not for me. I had felt uncomfortable about the stereotypical nature of the gig upon my first reading of it, but I pushed all thoughts of arguing this case aside and decided it was just a gig, and it would be great for a few extra dollars to pay off debt, put in the tank, or any list of things that I needed money to accomplish. The problem is that every time I talked about this gig, I would talk about how much I was uncomfortable with it.  I proceeded to show up for work anyway, because I had a commitment. That was the day it all went down.

I arrived at the gig , parked my car and walked to the building. I saw a friend of mine and obnoxiously yelled her name as a large group of people walked by me. We checked in and went to start our gig. After I completed the job and headed out, I looked for my wallet, it was a bright colored so it was hard to miss. I didn’t see it in the room with the rest of my stuff so I thought that maybe I left it in the car….and then I got the call from the bank. Nope, it wasn’t in the car, it was slowly making it’s rounds , my debit card was being used like a 2 dollar floozy. ughhhhh

I don’t know when it happened. Did it fall out of my pocket when I got out of the car, did I drop it on my walk to work or did someone swipe it while my focus was elsewhere?

I was reminded of that episode of Sex and the City where Carrie found her “Carrie” necklace and in essence found herself again.

I was on the opposite end of the spectrum. Losing/having my wallet stolen was just a physical manifestation of what was internally going on with me, I had lost myself. Tryna make a dollar outta 85 cents, I started chasing the money and stopped chasing my dreams. I’m an artist mammit, and I got some things to create! The good news is I can get “me” back. Yes, I can get a new id or debit card, but I can also return to those things that are the essence of me, i.e. the writing, ,the acting, listening to that still voice again and the folly of life.

I’m going back to the old way of things anyway, carrying important things close to the heart. Things might get lost in there, but at least I know where to find ’em.

Oh yeah, that job I was so committed to wasn’t so committed to me.

So how about you, have you ever felt like you lost yourself? What did you do to get back to you?