Filling Up on Life & Easter Sunday with Amanda Effing Palmer

"You are all godless people."

There she was, and there we were. She looking like a Mucha painting come to life wearing a floor length tuxedo jacket and her painted eyebrows and jealousy inducing bone structure. There I was sitting with my brother and sis-in-law, squinting to see through my out-of-date contact lenses to the lady on the stage. Amanda Effing Palmer. So Effing Awesome.

I'll back pedal a moment here to say that, since my last entry, I've been a whirling dervish of hope and sadness as I rode the waves of unemployment and creativity. There's only so much you can do when you're anxious and having panic attacks at three in the morning. I'd finished the rough draft of a novel, a short-short story, a handful of poems, and even a few paintings. Yet it didn't feel like enough. I felt like I had to legitimize my being out of work by at least being productive in my creative pursuits while also job hunting like it was my job and figuring out how to dumb down my resume enough that someone might hire me.

The welcome mat at my uncle's.

Easter weekend brought a big sigh of relief and release. It's family tradition to go up to my Grandmother's home in the Shenandoah valley and have a big meal with all the family around. My parents and I had gone up a few days early. We set up camp an uncle's house, said uncle had left the day before for a vacation, so it was just the three of us for a couple of days.

There's no internet. All the furniture is older than me and my parents' ages combined. There is a television, but I don't watch much of that anyway. And come to find out- the plumbing is questionable at best. We discovered that last bit when I flushed the upstairs toilet and a leak sprung up in the downstairs one. Tree roots had invaded the line underneath the house. The issue was fixed, but I was distrusting of the toilet from then on.

It sounds almost like a punishment to those who simply have to have internet access 24/7, or have to have a television. But in reality it was exactly what I needed. I couldn't job search online. I couldn't update my blog. I couldn't do much of anything.

It was so great! I could fill up on life for a while.

Hoppy Easter, y'all!

I spent the time instead with family. Easter Sunday rolls around and we gather like we do and eat as much as we like and there's an egg hunt and bubble blowing and squirrel hunting. I say my good-byes and with my brother and SIL we headed down to Richmond.

The National is filled with sweet and harmonious fans. Ourselves included. Hair colored like Easter eggs or candy floss dot the landscape of the crowd as we all shuffle in. One of the staff members and I compare cat scratches on our arms. We get our beers and rifle through the pages of Amanda's books right before she comes on stage.

And then she's there. Waving her ukelele and she begins to belt out her tunes. The evening goes on and it's the most polite concert crowd I've ever seen. Amanda of course notes this and as she is taking song requests someone asks to hear "Dirty Business". Amanda asks for someone to come up and Google the lyrics since she can't remember them all. Hilarity ensues.

. @amandapalmer calls on some fan assistance to help her with the words for fan-requested "Dirty Business" http://t.co/NsUVu84MMW
— Jaime (@wojo4hitz) April 6, 2015

The night wares on and there's the "Ask Amanda" portion of the show. She answers a few questions and the one that stuck in my head was someone asked "How do you stop being afraid of everything?"

It's a good question because we've all been there. Even the person on stage who is the most successful, creative, and fiercest person in the room. She tells of how she's afraid of everything all the time, but that she goes ahead and does it anyway. Is she still afraid? ABSOLUTELY! But, she says, she could either be afraid and not do the thing, or she can be afraid and do it anyway. Ultimately the answer is clear to her.

I thought about what I was afraid of, and for the sake of not making this entry any longer than it already is, I'll say that there's a lot  that I am afraid of. I'm afraid that I won't pass my massage therapy license exam, I'm afraid that nothing I write is worth publishing, I'm afraid that anything and everything I do is going to be excrement and that's it's not worth doing at all.

Well.

I don't have much choice. I can be afraid and not do anything, or I can be afraid and do it anyway. Here's to what comes after doing it anyway.