The Cherry Plum Test....

What are the things in my life that could pass the cherry plum test?  Or, for me, truly, the fig test.  Figs.  I understand why fig used to be slang for a woman's private parts.  Figs are amazing.  And figs make me feel alive and yes there is a poignancy because they are so amazing for so short a time.  Dried figs are beyond mediocre.  A betrayal, almost of promise and expectations and possibilities.

So what are the things in my life that can hold their own against a great fig?

Sex, of course.

Beethoven's 9th.

Haigha Sophia.

My cats when they purr.

The people I love.

About 15 hours a week of my job.

Travel

Beautiful theatre and literature when it moves me.  (Which is very rare these days.)


So how do I get more of this?

Well, first and foremost, I need to stop the numbing stuff.  It doesn't fit with my public persona (or even my private persona here), but I play more video games than I'd want anyone to know.  I don't watch a lot of TV, but I listen to NPR kind of obsessively, and play video games.

There seems a lot more joy and peace in Tsiolkovsky's First Piano Concerto than in Fresh Air, but I listen to the Fresh Air shows much more obsessively than read good books and listen to Bach.

I need more down time (I actually work really hard and when I tell someone that I have an 'easy' day on Saturday because I'm only working for 2 hours, then I have to go to the gym, then a writing group, and then take a friend out for her birthday, I realize that my 'easy' days have more stops than many people's hard days, but I need better quality down time.  I need to read more. Write more. Fuck more. Empathize with a character and have a catharsis more.

I could take 2 weeks and go anywhere in the world I want in January.  But I only have $4000 in my savings account, which just seems too little to blow 2K on a vacation.  (And I owe my parents 5K, and I'd like to fund my Roth for this year....)  And yet, I'm sorely tempted.  What am I saving money for?  What would be wrong with blowing a couple thousand dollars.  I'm so burnt out.  I'm sorely tempted.  I want to live more!  And enjoy the cherry plums.