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08/20/2006: "While you were painting..."
Tonight Maren called from the Island Pub to see if she and her boyfriend could stop by. Now, as a painter, when someone knocks or calls I say "Not now, I'm painting"...I've said it a million times and my friends *mostly* understand. However, I wasn’t painting tonight, and even though my first instinct was to say “not now”…well, remember that Seinfeld where George decides that he’s going to start doing the opposite of his instincts…well, it was like that. I just said “sure, stop by”…which was particularly unusual because my house wasn’t clean…but I decided not to worry about it.
They came over and later my friends Tom and Julie stopped by as well. I asked everyone to play Karaoke Revolution (on x-box) and there was some resistance but they finally relented. Marna and Patrick came over too and we sang our asses off... everyone ended up having a lot of fun (which I knew they would).
By the time my voice was hoarse it was time to pick up a friend coming in on the red eye flight. This friend was very tired and yet took the time to talk with me (at length) about a problem I'm having, which was the perfect cap to the night.
Ever since I started considering moving away from Juneau, I’ve made myself more available to my friends and vice versa. Everyday last week I had dinner or lunch with someone different and I’m realizing how this town is absolutely full of people who love me, and whom I love in return. It’s an amazingly good feeling.I think it's funny how art has been the most important thing in my life for so long, the thing I put above everything and *everyone* else…and yet I've had more meaningful interactions in the past couple of weeks than I've had in months, and all I had to do was make a bit of time for others. Don't worry though, I'll *never* stop painting, but I'm going to try to put the brush down more often, and put my friends first.