I'm an adult; a transition story

what is it about me that is trying to hold onto the days of yore when i had nothing to do? when being bored was a great sigh of relief. when the parents paid for dinner, groceries, and rent. when i could come home from school and do whatever i wanted for about seven hours with no foreseeable consequence. when i was just biding my time and wasting hours dying to grow up and enter the world.
well, i have entered the world. i turned 26 last tuesday and i feel like i'm still hanging on to making things easy for myself. i started my own business to afford myself lots of free time for important things like video games, eating really slowly, and traveling. and with the business acheiving minimal success i find i am short on cash and short on motivation to seek a part time job to fill time and my wallet. i scrape by with the money i make from the company which is ridiculously low, supplemented by short term part-time gigs that fall in my lap. some of which pay very well. so, i've been able to keep my wits about me, relaxing perhaps more than i should, sleeping in til 11 every day, and doing small art and theatre projects. i really like my life situation right now. of course, there are things i am missing, but for the most part i'm moving in the right direction, holding on to leisure and foresaking the 40 hour work week.
BUT, a change has come. the weeked before my 26th birthday i attended a conference at the behest of a friend and colleague in Ohio. i didn't know what to expect. the conference was put on by AIN, The Applied Improvisation Network. They're a collective of business people and improvisers who have managed to carve themselves a nice little niche in the world of corporate training. It's around 85 or so people who refer to each other for advice and jobs. It's a community of professionals who like to have fun.
I had my doubts going into the conference. I had no idea what to expect and the people who had been there years previously couldn't give me an adequate explanation of what it would be. It reminded me of trying to track down what a Harold was. No one who was performing the Harold or had seen it could give me an accurate description of how it went down. Upon finally figuring it out for myself here at the home of the Harold, Chicago, I was let down. Perhaps from frustration. The point is, I was not let down by the AIN conference. It's really what I needed to introduce me to a completely foreign world; the corporate world.
Surrounded by people an average of ten years my senior was a great way for me to see how this business works. Poeple were artfully making connections, giving their business schpeil for the thirtieth time to a new friend without the slightest grimace (people do love to talk about themselves.) I just watched most of the time trying to figure things out. Once I was able to approach people I found it very easy to spill my story, the one about the kid with no experience in the field whatsoever, who was looking for guidance.
On the first day, the whole conference did an exercise where around a hundred pictures were laid out on the floor and we were asked to walk around and pick up the picture that represented what we wanted to get out of the conference. looking around at everyone, i wasn't sure what i wanted. i just knew i had no experience and i felt kind of lost. so we walked around and i laughed to myself when i found my picture. it was a baby being fed from a bottle. i picked it up.
the structure of the conference was really what led to me having an amazing time the whole weekend. it's a new forum called "open space." on the first day all the conference participants gathered around in a circle of chairs and we were asked what we wanted to learn from the conference. with sheets of paper and markers in the center of the circle we could go up and describe a session that we wanted to convene. we would write down the title and then slap it up on a huge grid that corresponded to a time and a board room in the hotel. after those who wanted to stand and describe their session had done so, the course of the conference had been laid out. you could attend any session for as long as you wanted. there were no requirements for participation, no rules within the sessions other than you should be where you need to be. if you need to be napping, go somewhere and nap. that is where you'll serve the conference the best. it's a great format for opening the lines of communication and in a sense improvising the conference. it kept alive the spirit that everyone at the conference is accustomed to; the spontaneity and immediacy of improv. nothing felt forced all weekend. it only felt laid back and open.
i sat in on a discussion about being experienced and cynical. for the people at the discussion, it was about how they were not enjoying their jobs. they had had enough of the corporate world and probably enough of running the same exercise over and over. for me, it was more about my experience in performing. i've been doing improv for around ten years, and for a while i've felt as though i've reached some kind of plateau. they were having issues with their work as i was having issues with my art. it was nice to air emotions about that.
i semi-led a contact improv jam that proved to be a very moving experience for myself and the other participants. i just put on some music and we floated around the room for an hour doing nonverbal improv through body contact. i felt very close to the other people afterwards, having learned so much about them, without even knowing their names. it was transcendant and a great meditation that didn't require being alone.
it was odd to be in settings where people ten or twenty years older than me were cursing. as the conference went on, these folks who were older than me would just curse whenever. in a classroom setting leading a session. in a bar hanging out. these people have always been the same amount older than me and ten years ago, they probably wouldn't have sworn at will in front of me. it made me feel closer to them and further from teenagers knowing it didn't bother anyone for them be free around me. kind of strange.
at the end of the conference we all reconvened at the big circle of chairs by the big grid. we self-reflected about what we had experienced the whole weekend and then one at a time we came to the center of the circle and talked about it. i can't even begin to describe what it was like. people were crying, baring their souls' troubles and conquerings. it was an extremely personal spilling of emotions between people who for the most part don't know each other at all. some of them knew some of the others, but for me only knowing really three or four other people previously, was not a stopping point. i felt as though i had been welcomed into a great new group of friends and associates, a community of people with common goals and artistic endeavours. it was really amazing.
so now i'm a member of the association and we're in the process of getting my little headshot up on the web site. i think maybe i don't really belong there reading everyone else's biographies. i've never led a team-building workshop for IBM or a conflict resolution session for Motorola. but i want to get where they are. i think i know a little better now what it means to be an adult just from observing people so similar to me. i can be an adult and still have time for sleeping in, improvising, and just doing nothing.

i can be an adult.

Thanks,
bearded lamb

Posted by Jeremy Lamb on October 18, 2005 02:12 PM
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