method acting

I feel like I’ve been having the same conversation the last few weeks. In the home of a client, over an online meeting, in one friend’s studio, then another, then another, in an almost empty hawker centre, and at a cafe during the brunch rush — the conversation goes: 

Me: I’ve decided to wind up the business.
Them: What? why? when? what will you do? how are you feeling? how did you know it was the right decision? have you thought about (x,y,z solutions)?

The most surprising thing I have learned is that almost everyone is apparently thinking of closing their business too. The second most surprising thing I have learned is that, in the midst of two job offers and my daydreams of non-boss life, I have decided I don’t want the stability of being an employee after all. I explained this to a friend today as we sat in her workshop. “I know how I work, and that’s not going to change whether I work for someone else or myself,” I tell her, when she interjects, “And why work so hard for someone else’s dream when you can chase yours, right?” 

“Precisely.”

*

Speaking of dreams, mine, as always, are trying to tell me something. A few days after a friend texts, “Are you still working on your book?” — hell no, I want to tell her — I find myself holding a book that I know is mine in my dreams. Two sleeps later, the book resurfaces, and this time I get to read what is inside. I wake with the first line so fresh in my head that I record a voice memo for myself, with my eyes closed, narrating that first line in entirety and the plot of the book. It is terrifying to live with this unplayed memo on my phone, but comforting to know the story can live on in this way, unscathed from this world.

I reply the text a few days later. “Not anymore. Maybe one day.”

*

We started sign language classes this year, a mid-week reprieve to Mon-Tue-Wed crashing into each other. Our teacher is 44 and a natural comedian. He wore a fedora to our first class and has since lived up to all expectations of him as a drama teacher. “What happens when your hand is broken,” W asked the teacher last week. He looked at her as if she had lost her mind. “Use your other hand?!” He gesticulated while rolling his eyes.

Coincidentally, my right hand has started cramping from all the practising. It seems on top of learning how to sign, I may end up becoming ambidextrous. (One can hope.)

*

I don’t know where this is going. There isn’t much else to say except that this is a new year, and I want to make it a good one. Because I think I am happy now. I feel it in the little things: running when the sun is out, eating pizza mid-week with friends, sitting in a car, the rain relenetless around us. Remembering to look up to find Orion in the night sky. Making plans for next week, next week, next month. And making plans for this next part of life.