How do you depressurize when life makes you feel that you are encased in carbonite?
Recently I found myself with a rare weekend during which I had no student papers to grade, no freelance deadlines looming, and the house to myself. I did some cleaning and caught up with a few minor tasks that had been collecting dust on to-do lists, but I spent most of the time marathoning Battlestar Galactica on Netflix.
Recently, as I’ve been thinking about what helps me not only to relax but to re-energize, I tried to remember what spurred my creative passions when I was young, back when I wasn’t consciously thinking of “passion” or trying to find anything in particular.
The answer was in a poster from a long time ago: science fiction.
The school where I now teach has rented a local movie theater for a showing of the original Star Wars, and as soon as I saw the iconic poster, I was brought back to seeing the film in a tiny South Dakota town the summer before my eighth grade year. Sitting back in the dark and entering a world that I could never have imagined on my own, I was immediately in love, entranced, enraptured. I remember reading about how George Lucas was going to release eight more movies in the series, three years apart (where did I read that before the internet?? I’m not sure) and realizing that I would be an “old” adult of nearly 40 when I would see the last one. Little did I know…
No one else in my family and none of my friends caught the Star Wars fever as I did. I had to wait to have a son.
So, with several uninterrupted hours to spend any way I wished, I binged on science fiction (for any BSG fans, I’m up to “A Measure of Salvation”).
I’ve never felt better or more ready to create my own new worlds. What childhood passions help you to decompress and re-energize?
If you haven’t yet seen the behind-the-scenes photos that Peter Mayhew (aka Chewbacca) recently shared, be sure to take a look.
Photo by fdecomite, made available via a CC by 2.0 license and cropped to size shown.
Crochet is an old one that works well for me now. But I also confess to loving animation – we have seen both Despicable Me’s, and binge watch Family Guy, South Park, and American Dad!
Crochet is one of mine, too! My grandmother taught me to crochet, so part of it is feeling a connection with her again.