multitudes

Last night I was reading an article about New Yorkers searching for inner peace, and I came upon the word: multitudes. It reminded me of this blog, and how I've neglected it for months now. When we left off, I had resigned from my full-time job to try the life of a freelancer. Fast forward six months - this is my email signature these days:

Amanda Hirsch
WORK http://www.amandahirsch.com
PLAY http://www.washingtonimprovtheater.com
BLOG http://www.creativedc.org

I'm no longer a job first and hobbies second. I am all of me. In other words: I contain multitudes.

Stay tuned.

I like these pictures of me.

This morning when I stepped outside, the air conditioners on my block sounded like distant applause. I'm not trying to sound poetic or deep: this was literally the thought that popped into my head. (My next thought was: "coffee!")

I'm guest blogging over at Hip Tranquil Chick this week - check it out:

• Today's post - on daring to put yourself out there
  
• Yesterday's post - on the practice of creative living

Let me know what you think.

"It takes courage to grow up
and turn out to be
who you really are."
---e e cummings

Last Thursday was my last day at work. I worked there 6 and a half years. I went straight from my going away party to the train station, and up to New York. I got to my hotel room at 11:30pm; the next morning, I was up at 7, and off to a breakfast meeting/schmooze-fest with a potential client. 10:45am, another meeting. 11:30, another.

1pm, lunch in Times Square with a guy a friend of mine thought I'd hit it off with - not romantically, more in a hey-they-have-a-lot-in-common way. He's self-published a bunch of albums and has a well-known blog and I'm trying to build up Creative DC... 3:30, coffee with a friend/producer. 5:30 drinks with another friend, a toast to my freedom.

8pm, the first in a string of probably 20+ improv shows I would see over the course of the weekend, as part of the Del Close Improv Marathon. More hours than I'd care to count spent in a dank basement theater surrounded by people with terrible B.O. cheering for creatures who, like myself, have tasted the improv high and can't quit til they get it back. Hoping Amy Poehler would show up - she didn't. Drinks with friends, more shows, more drinks, walking up and down 8th Avenue between shows, cheap pizza, cheap egg sandwich from a Korean grocery without air conditioning.

Sunday, a restaurant with good A/C, the first we've had all weekend, brunch with a friend. Sunday night, on a train home, exhausted, high on the fumes of activity, finally finish the Truman Capote biography I'm reading, slam through a vapid interior decorating magazine, pick up the crumbs of the Yoga Journal I started on the ride up. Home, exhausted, midnight.

10:00 the next morning, a conference call with another potential client. Sore throat, cancel a lunch meeting, exhausted. Sit hunched over laptop finishing PowerPoint slideshow for former boss's going away party back at....work. Show up at 3:30, part of the decorating committee. Decorate. Party from 4-6:30, cheerful, surrounded by ghosts of workdays past. "Yep, I'm just ready for a little variety," I chirp.

Wine. Potato chips - perfect salty taste. Then off to auditions for my improv troupe, Jinx. 7:30-10. Grapefruit juice. Drinks afterwards, who are we going to pick? Pick. Home to bed. Sleep til noon, exhausted. Afternoon with a spreadsheet, mapping out 90-day goals for me, my blog, my freelance business. Clarity. Bed.

Wednesday and Thursday, long peaceful drive out to Rockville to do government support work my mom helped me get. Mindless - thrillingly so. View out the office window of trees, reminds me of Maryland - of course I'm in Maryland, but it reminds me of Maryland, of growing up, of all the time spent there. Today, slept til 11:30, sore throat descended into full-on cold. Stumble out in the heat to walk my dog. We're out of milk so I drink my coffee black.

(I wrote this Thursday night, but couldn't get online to post it til now.)

It's weird how your sense of self can be challenged by travel to a new place. I'm alone in a hotel room in New York tonight. Today was my last day at work, my last day at a place I've been for six and a half years - longer than I was in college, or high school; almost as long as I've been married. I lived in 4 homes during my tenure. My husband and I bought our first house.

My team threw me a going away party, and invited my husband, who drove me straight to the train station afterwards - I have a day of schmoozing ahead of me tomorrow, meeting with potential clients (and some friends). We were planning to come to New York this weekend anyway, for the Del Close comedy fest, and then when I decided to start freelancing I arranged to come a day early and meet with people. Hubby joins me tomorrow.

After what felt like the longest train ride ever (despite a good book), I decided to walk to the hotel from the train station - 13 blocks, and 3 avenues. I walked through Times Square and felt like Alice in Wonderland with all the glitter - I've seen it a million times before, but tonight it felt otherworldly. I drifted through. On the train ride up, passing through Philly, where I went to college, we passed the boat houses lit up all along the Schuykill river, and I was struck with nostalgia, with a sense of passage. Thinking of the young woman that walked those city streets.

I arrived at my hotel covered in sweat. The lobby is beautiful old New York on a small scale; the elevator fits about 3 people comfortably; and my room is probably about 8 x 10. The bathroom is like a closet. The view out the window is of other windows. The window unit is roaring. There's a framed black and white photograph on the wall that's supposed to look arty. The sheets are soft. My limbs are weary.

In seven hours I get up and start the schmoozing, start the selling of myself, the charming. It's nerve-wracking, and too fast - I need time to come down. But at the same time, it's thrilling: to think of being myself out in the world, for what feels like the first time.