The Girl Is Back In Town (Broke but Wiser?)

Many, many thanks to Corey for minding Mind the Gap while I was off in The Land of Fire and Ice. I was grateful that he made time in his schedule and accepted the invitation, and quite impressed to come home and see all the fun you guys have been having. Since the beginning, Corey has been a sounding board for my own work on this blog and is never far from the ideas on these pages even when he's not typing the text himself, so even though I'm back I hope he won't stray too far away. In fact, I'd like to keep him on board as house illustrator, but he's whining that I won't buy him the 144 color crayon box. Apparently, he can't work within the creatively constrictive conditions of the 64 color box I offered. I'll keep you posted on the negotiation.

It's hard to start writing again, after being away and unplugged from the Internet. All the news headlines look the same as when I left, and I'm not sure how to jump back in. This is also my first day working in our new house/office, and I'm not feeling settled yet. Just because "change is hard" is a cliche doesn't make it any less true. But for as overwhelming as the piled up email messages and moving boxes are, time away from the daily grind has highlighted some things that it would probably be a good idea to be mindful of as we sink deeper into technology.

People: It's almost too easy these days to avoid the physical presence of people, and it's a powerful thing to only be interacting with those who are within shouting distance of you for a couple weeks. They become the focus, and the rest of the world is relatively out of mind in a way that's rare when we can yell at someone across the globe with the touch of a few buttons while we are also talking to someone else on the phone. Maybe this is a particularly sore spot for me because after we landed I checked my voicemail and 11 days of bliss felt like they drained right out of my heart in about 30 seconds. Lesson: Spend more time with real people, and be kinder in all communication, esp. when the stress of phone and email is involved.

Nature: It seemed impossible to take a bad picture in Iceland; the land was just that beautiful. And powerful (see: earthquake). But even more than that, the fresh clean smell in the air--even in the bustling metropolis of Reykjavik--made us consider not coming home again. I don't spend very much time watching TV, but I spend 10 hours a day in front of a computer. Goal: Spend an hour less a day at my desk and spend it playing outside. Maybe a dog would help here.

Speed: People write about it all the time, but many of us are drowning in our email, our calendar, our lives. In my own world, the ratio has clearly tipped off balance, so this summer I'm going to try to do less and do what's left a lot better. Plan: Make time to read more, think more, write more carefully. Anyone have any tips or success stories for how to make this change stick? Which brings me to...

Change: While moving, I tried several times to throw away the old lid to a trash can that had been stolen months ago. The nice trash guys always threw that lid back into our yard along with the new empty trash can no matter how I tried to indicate that the lid was actually trash too. Challenge: Sometimes even when you want to change, other people don't realize because it's hard to see at first. Figure out how to communicate this rather then slipping back into my old ways.

Tomorrow I'm off to Denver for the National Performing Arts Convention 2008. Get the news from me and the team at NewMusicBox and at ArtsJournal's own NPAC blog. In addition, stay tuned for photo snaps and all the NPAC gossip here on Mind the Gap.