Take-Offs and Landings
Planes take off and land near me as I write this in my little Rhodia notebook (yes — I write before I type). I was a competitive figure skater for nearly two decades, so taking off and landing are a big part of my vocabulary.
These days, I never seem to take off. Or rather, it’s my projects that never land.
I’ve been working on a video based on all the footage of my competing on the ice. I started working on it last year, and — as I do — just stopped working on it. Technically I started working on it two years ago… but that was just to import all the footage into FCPX and then drop it in a timeline. I didn’t do anything with it until last year. Then stopped.
Why? I can’t answer that yet.
I’m jealous of those who are fearlessly pursuing their passion. I knew how to do that when I was younger: I loved figure skating. Loved it. I would skate for 2-3 hours every day, 6 days a week, and I did that for years. I didn’t know how lucky I was to be able to devote myself that fully to such a beautiful sport. And to this day I can’t really watch skating because I miss having that part in my life.
I don’t want to get back on the ice, that’s not quite it. I did that. It’s that devotion, that freedom, that crackle in the morning, that made getting up early worth it. The morning fog clinging from the night’s cold damp. I don’t know the science of why there would be a mist in the air on the ice, but I’m smiling even now at the thought of it.
It’s probably for the best that I don’t know, considering how many times we had to evacuate these old rinks because of ammonia leaks.
I can still feel what a rink feels like. I can close my eyes and just be there. To all the arenas I’ve loved before. I want this footage to live in some way. There’s a strange beauty to it, and I want to elevate that into something. I know there’s a story there if I can cut through it.
So that’s why I started to create this. I don’t want to let it go — but I keep letting it go.
Every project I didn’t finish hurts me. I think there’s something in Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way about that. Yes, I did The Artist’s Way. And a host of other things, too.
The moral of this blog post: unfinished projects hurt. Here’s to hoping they land soon.