You settle in more quickly than you know.

The apartment that seemed so strange becomes home (so much so, you relax into full-on slob mode). Within days, you have your grocery store, your coffee place, your routine.

You came up here with intention to try things differently (to get away, to try living elsewhere, to do some writing you'd been unable or unwilling to do at home) and before you know it, you've slipped into all kinds of same-old behavior. Is your life really so different, or did you just haul the same shit, or a subset of it, 1,100 miles north?

There are many great things about Method training for the actor. One of the greatest is learning one's patterns. Patterns are what keep us from being present; patterns are also a great part of what defines us as characters. Examine the patterns, hold them up to the excruciating light of truth, and maybe, maaaaaybe, you can start to break them.

And once you break them, you can start to illuminate them, so that maybe, maaaaaaybe, people around you can start to see theirs. The interested parties, of course.

You look at what you're doing. You look at it under a bright, bright light.

You tell everyone else what you see.

You wake up and try again.

xxx c