100 posts in this blog already! (I know, some of you are like, "What do you mean, already? It's been four years!" Suck it, bloggers; I have a life.) I feel like I should do something special ala Strong Bad e-mails, but I don't have any flash animation skills or quirky catch phrases, so, alas, you'll just have to read my post instead.

It's 1:01 am, and I just got home from work. I started serving at Magnolia, a local restaurant here in Lincoln. It's awesome--I can't believe I never served before. It combines my favorite things--food, people, and a fast-paced, always-varying work environment. Tonight, as we were lighting candles, folding napkins, and straightening chairs, I felt a little bit like I used to feel before a show . . . back in the green room, helping actors with hair and makeup, setting up the soundtrack and lights, and making sure everything was right so that when the audience came through the doors, they had the experience we wanted to create for them. It's such a great mix of detail work and big-picture prioritization; with both jobs, you have to know when the little things count, and when to let them go and get on with what's important.

Lately I've been thinking a lot about performance. The past two or three years of my life I thought for sure that I would get my Ph.D. in medieval studies, and the past six months, just the thought of limiting myself to such a narrow field makes me feel claustrophobic. I mean, if you get a Ph.D. in chemistry, you can do chemistry--make longer-lasting lipstick, or better-tasting margarine, or bombs. If you get a Ph.D in medieval lit, you can't exactly DO medieval lit. You study it. You teach it. You write about it in journals that have such small distribution that I might conceivably be able to finance them with a year's salary. You speak to other academics in a dizzying, incestuous circle about it.

And that's it.

Performance, on the other hand, is something you DO. It involves action. And I love me some action. And what I realized tonight is that there's really an element of performativity to everything, which is kind of what the field of performance studies is about; everything we do is, in some sense, playing a role.

Not that I'm going to drop everything and take performance studies. But I am going to try to combine some element of medieval literature with drama/theater, so that I can not only teach, write, and participate in the very important conversations going on about "others and othering" in Marie de France, but also create experiences for average people (i.e. non-academics) that bring them in touch with a part of the world they didn't know about before. This last part I want to accomplish through theater--acting, directing, and "dramaturging".

Speaking of really liking my job, I really like the people there, too. And this is hard for me, because I know I'm leaving in exactly 3 months from today. Sometimes, at this point in my experience somewhere, making new friends feels a bit pointless and sad. I'll just miss them when I go, and wish that we'd had more time to get to know each other, but it won't have been quite enough time for me to really keep in touch with them on a regular basis. And then I just feel like I'm missing out on something really great.

But as I was biking home tonight, under a sky full of stars, taking it easy when I was alone on the road and pedaling hard when cars were behind me, I realized . . . maybe this is what life is about: loving something even though you know you'll lose it. I know that someday Dwight will die, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't love him now. When I'm in love, I don't know if my love will be returned, or, if it is, if that love will last, but that doesn't mean I should hold back. Everything and everyone I love will someday change, go away, or die. I'll lose these new, cool work friends in about three months, but I want to have fun with them in the three months we have together. I want to live like I'll be in Lincoln forever . . . and then, when I'm not, give thanks for the blessings I had here, and look forward to the blessings to come.

Sometimes I think my thoughts are so profound--and then when I write them here, they seem like every other cliche about life I've ever read on someone's blog and said, "You just now figured that out?" Oh well--at least I figured it out sometime.