I DON'T KNOW

There is an improv game that i sometimes play with students called, "Yes. No." One person is only allowed to say yes and one person is only llowed to say no. At first glance this game seems boring, passe, even easy; but it has produced some of the most interesting scenes I have ever seen. Wehave all had some form of the lesson, "It's not what you say, it's how you say it" and I have seen the gamut of human emotion in this exercise.

This has been my recent experience with saying, "I don't know"

This is not a word I say a lot. I am not afraid to say it. I used to have a bit of fear surrounding the admission of lavk of knowledge but throughout my adult life I have learned that saying, "I don;t know" is sometimes one of the only ways to acquire knowledge.

And, I also tend to know the answers to most of the questions people ask me. Okay, maybe not MOST, but more than the average bear.

At any rate,I think I have said, "I don't know more in the last 2 months than I have in the last few years.
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(I am on the plane right now to Jo'Burg. We are at an altitude of 32000 feet, flying east having just passed Venezula. It's 8:05pm in Seattle, 11:05 on the East Coast and 6:05am in South Africa. I have no idea what time it is on the plane. I do not have internet on the plane. I am making a word document to enter later.)

Back to the topic at hand. The journey of "I don't know"
At first it was sort of cool, and a bit liberating in a wind rushing through your hair while you stand on the beach sort of way. Footloose and fancy free. "I don;t know. I don't have to know.I don't want to know. I don't need to know. it's gonna be great."

I hung out here for quite some time. I mean, why not? It's a great place to be.

Then the trip started getting closer and more real, and the flavor of "I don't know" began to shift ever so slightly. What was once a delightful new flavor of Blizzard from dairy queen started morphing into something else. Something more like...wasabi. Occasionally someone would ask me a question about the trip and it was like eating a large spoonful of wasabi. These really intense bursts of pain, and that panic wasabi gives you that you might experience that level of intense pain forever...And then it magically goes away. But the Blizzard doesn't quite taste the same after a bite of wasabi, now does it.

Then i got to about a week ago, where the real panic started setting in. Which coincided with a trip home, getting my period, a $2000 car bill to fix my car and discovering that I might have to find a new place to live three weeks after I get back. So, as any good procrastinator would do, I entered the denial phase. this phase was key. I simple refused to put myself in situations that would require me to say, "I don't know" It was far easier to catch up on Grey's Anatomy, Brothers and Sisters and finally learn who won Project Runway (F**k that Irina bitch)

Sometimes I contemplate the sanity of the decision to be around loved one during trying times. the problem with loved ones is that we know they are not going anywhere. So, when we are FREAKING out, they get the brunt of it. We have now moved forward from wasabi to root canal. Root canal is not quite right. Every so often I pull a muscle in my neck. It runs from the base of my head, down underneath my right shoulder blade. The first time I pulled it was on the roadtrip when I moved to Seattle, and when I am stressed it rears its ugly head. This is the sort of pain that is mind numbing. It makes you want to backhand people. It causes an irrational desire for inflicting pain on others. Sometimes I can find the exact right position where it doesn't hurt, or numb it with a lot of ice, but really it just takes time and a lot of muscle relaxers to calm down.

My friends and family have been the right position, the ice and the muscle relaxers, even as I have occasionally mentally backhanded them.

And so here i am. Having had a great new flavor of blizzard, some wasabi and a round of psychic PT. I am once again comfortable with, "I don't know." It feels more grounded then the first time. My faith in myself, my belief in the rest of my team and the unending support of family and friends makes me pretty full of positive thoughts.

But then again, it could all change again the second I get off the plane.

I just don't know.