(Actually more than) Halfway

This was written on the train from Venice to Munich; I put off posting it for a while, but am catching up now.

Hey gang! (We're all in a gang now don't worry about it, mostly it's just bake sales and coming up with themed brunches.)

Thought it might be worth dropping off some odds-and-ends thoughts here before plodding on to the next array of things! This trip from Venice to Munich isn’t quite the halfway mark – I arrived in Vienna on May 9 and will return home on August 23 – but it’s close enough, and it feels a bit of it, given the structure of the trip. So then: time to take stock and mull things over!

Navel gazing, feelingsy drib-drabs after the jump…

Venetian dead-ends are the best kind of dead ends! This one is also a METAPHOR for that old saying, "There's water at the end of the tunnel."

Where are we at now

After about a month of Italy, which was almost purely about relaxation, exploration, and thinking/feeling, I’m on a Deutsches Bahn train from Venice to Munich! We’re winding through the Brenner Pass, which is jaw-droppingly gorgeous. It’s a long trip, but well worth the time to see the landscape slip past. No photos or video, as my reserved seat had me in a seat with a decal on the window, but as a Human Being I was Deeply Moved!

From here, it’s a few weeks of Germany, a few weeks with old, close friends in the UK, and a few weeks of Scandinavia and then back to the adventure of trying to write a dissertation hooray for life!

Yr humble narrator, in Emilia Romagna, in one of the many shirts that are increasingly too baggy for Fashionable Company

Where we are at now, but like, in here (vaguely gestures towards heart)

Better places. Good days and bad, steps forward and back, but the slow movement seems to be forward-ish. Early on in this trip I was moving through a pretty self-critical place; friends were great about reminding me not to be overly hard on myself, but I’m glad I spent the time there that I did, because I definitely had a lot to learn as a person and a partner. Coinciding with this, as something of a transition, came a wave of – no better word for it – resentment, occasionally shading into anger. Again – not my favorite, but I do know that the mind and body have to rewire themselves pretty significantly, and this was A Necessary Step.

Lately, I’ve felt much more… balanced, I guess. I’m reminded of something that I was told months ago: that healthy processing after emotional traumas involves a balance between past and present. There’s often a tendency to either ruminate in the past, dwelling and replaying and grinding one’s teeth forever; or to completelyignore it, try to hit “delete, ignore” and race into the future. But productive processing involves a balance – looking to the past for lessons, for perspective, for growth, and looking to the future with a sense of purpose, plan, openness, receptivity. That’s where my head’s been at. It’s not that I’ve shaken off my circumstances – I think about the divorce pretty much daily – but the direction of those thoughts is shifting, gradual though it may be, towards something more useful, more productive, more hopeful. And that feels real good.

FRIENDS ARE HELPFUL! (OK this statue might not be about Pals Being Great, nobody really knows and it might actually be about how Romans Are Scared Dummies, but I'm choosing to interpret it as a time-traveling tribute to how great my pals have been this summer. Pals!!! You've been SO GREAT!)

Where are we at in terms of whether our brain is functional

Ha ha WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEE are doing fine mostly.

Trip fatigue is a real thing, and I’m incredibly ready to land somewhere for a week or so – the quick stops in Padua and Venice have left me a little off-kilter, and taking a few days in a few towns in Bavaria and Thuringa look likely to be much the same. BUT, when I’ve been able to plant somewhere for a week, get a routine quickly established, be fully unpacked, and let my brain be in the present rather than looking to the next stop… those have remained good weeks. I’ll have that again in Berlin, after which I think every stage of the trip is close enough to a week that it’ll treat me well.

As to the dissertation: Italy was, for the most part, a total break. Usefully so, given how much material I’d been tearing through at the end of Vienna. And letting the ideas and fragments marinate has been good. But it’s time to pivot back into gear, to get this stuff in shape for a productive year of work ahead. The hope is to spend my time in Germany/UK/Scandinavia mostly doing translation work and some analysis of the plays and production texts that will form the core of my work so that when I return to the States I have a good body of work to play off of as I head into the writing phase. One very positive step: I got into a working group at ASTR, one of the two major national theatre conferences! This gives me an impetus to write a chunk of the dissertation early for the November conference, and will hopefully give me an early temperature check on the work I’ve done, to make sure I’m not totally off balance.

Anyhow. That’s about me: brain, heart, and body all doing mostly okay and hoping to keep making gains as I head into the back half of the summer. The fall is a big unknown and I get nervous thinking about it, but this year has taught me, if nothing else, life goes on after some of the worst things you can think of, so that is what I hope to do as well! Hooray for adventures!

Venice: was extremely pretty, nice job Venice please don't vanish forever