Learning New Steps To Dance

Learning New Steps To Dance September 23, 2012

“Dance, when you’re broken open. Dance, if you’ve torn the bandage off.

Dance in the middle of the fighting. Dance in your blood.
Dance when you’re perfectly free.”
― Rumi

Man, have I got a lot going on in my life now. Not only I am getting to learn a new city, but I’m job hunting, getting my feet wet with PNC-MN, realizing I have to have more than the two pairs of shoes I landed with, grieving for my hometown, worrying about winter, and then another big change that will be revealed later this week.

I’ve been going to bed pretty early, because if I’m not hiking to the Mississippi, picking winter squash or getting lost on Minneapolis bus lines, I’m typing away and worrying about the future. I get tired early, and I wake up early. I marvel at the leaves changing color and shiver at the cold breeze that my body wasn’t expecting for another two months. My allergies are going bonkers because of all the new kinds of dust, dander and pollen my body isn’t used to.

Really, what is happening is that I am learning a new dance. The season cycles have changed significantly, the geography, the culture, the food and even the air I breathe. It is all new to me. So I must dance differently. Abandon my sanded soft-shoe Southern shuffle for something that speaks more of Scandanavian and German heritage. Maybe with a polka beat?

For the first time in my life Mabon falls at a time when the weather feels like Thanksgiving. I see pro-marriage equality yard signs and stickers everywhere. Pagans here hang out at each other’s events and seem just a tad less crazy than the norm. There are good things here, things that I like, that make learning this new dance easier. And the joy of discovery just keeps going: I still haven’t taken a bus into St. Paul to learn to navigate that city on my own, still haven’t tried cheese curds, and still haven’t watched a single football game (I didn’t think football could be a bigger deal than it is in the South, but I was wrong).

So this week on the blog has a bit of a theme. I want to wrap some things up in preparation of the big announcement later this week, so I will be talking about a lot of awesome stuff, and creating a lot of posts. I’m also going to be talking about learning a new dance, moving in new directions, and useful things I have learned about big life changes.

But today I’m going to read and do laundry and catch up on Glee. So enjoy this:


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