mouse lemur

I wish I was a mouse lemur, living in a hole in a tree. Twelve of us living together in one little niche because we're so small, coming out at night to eat nectar from giant tropical flowers. Not a care in the world. I imagine there are lots of things that might eat me in the nocturnal tree-tops, but I'm not worried about that. I'm focused on licking nectar off this pretty flower and getting a big sugar rush. Oh, and crunching on the occasional night moth for added protein.

savor

I'm going to savor every last bit of this experience.

getty goggles

It seems like only yesterday I was getting my first tour of the "new" Getty Villa, where I'd just accepted my dream job as Villa Exhibitions Coordinator. I was barely 30, eager to make a change professionally, and hardly able to believe my luck at getting a sweet job at the Villa right before it reopened to the public after years of renovation! I'd only visited once before, when I was eighteen, but it had always been my fantasy to work there one day, and then suddenly, this job basically fell in my lap, and it was the perfect example of that expression: luck is when preparation meets opportunity.

I was on cloud nine. Everyone was so impressed. Ooo, the Getty! That's really a step up. That's the kind of place everyone in the museum world aspires to be. Ooo, the Villa! It's so beautiful out there in Malibu. It's all antiquities all the time. You can see dolphins on the way to work! And it turned out to be just as dreamy as I'd imagined. Probably even better. I made many, many wonderful friends and colleagues. I worked on many, many wonderful exhibitions. I became part of a close-knit family of Villa people, sharing good times and bad, triumphs and controversy.

And now I'm leaving. Can it really be time to walk away from the dream so soon? The Villa is still wonderful, but some of the glory is gone, and that in itself is a hard thing to admit. Maybe the glory isn't gone so much as it's just changed. And that's a natural thing. Perhaps my Villa era has passed, and now it's time for something completely different. It better be, because I just jumped off the deep end and there's no turning back now!

ducks in a row

Line up, damn ducks!

bugz

I've been lucky not to have many bug problems in my life (knock on wood). But since I've moved into this wonderful apartment -- and it IS wonderful in almost every way -- I've had serious fruit flies, a major flea infestation, and now apparently a termite situation. What the hell? I guess I can count myself lucky that these infestations haven't overlapped. One bug at a time, please. I'm reluctant to tell the landlord because I don't want to have to evacuate myself and the cats if he has to fumigate or some horrible thing, but clearly I'll have to do something if this goes on much longer. I'll give it a couple more days and see if maybe it was just a fluke episode . . .

cloning

I wish I could clone myself so I could get more done in a single lifetime. I may have some ambition, but I'm not one of those hyper ambitious people who pursues multiple advanced degrees, while traveling the world and raising a family. Mostly, I want to be mellow, and allow time to savor the experiences that really make me happy.

But, if I could clone myself (or get cloned, I don't care who does it really, as long as it's done well), I could keep my wonderful job at the beautiful Getty Villa, take the exciting new job at LACMA, get another job at the Natural History Museum, and maybe another one at the zoo, and also do field research like Jane Goodall and David Attenborough, and be a wildlife photographer. Funny how all of these involve "working," though. If I really had the power to clone myself, I guess I should think bigger. Some clones could work -- because I really do love the work I do, or imagine myself doing in these various scenarios; and it's good to have the structure and community that a working environment or professional field offers -- but other clones could travel the world simultaneously, visiting the pyramids of Egypt, the ruins of Petra, the wildlife and cultures of the African savanna, the antiquity of Greece, the tropics of Hawaii or Costa Rica. And yet other clones could just live a life of leisure, lying around sipping fancy drinks in exotic locations -- but I think these last clones would eventually get very bored and commit suicide.

Cloning is all well and good, but I presume you don't get to actually experience all those lives yourself. You're just one of the many versions of yourself. You still only get to live your one life, and you can just be proud of the others, or make them report back to you monthly with tales of their adventures. Maybe a better solution is time travel. Then you could try out one career or path for as long as you like, and then when you're ready to try something different, just turn back the clock to age 20 or something, and set out down a different path. But again, would you be able to remember each of your various lives? I guess you'd need to be immortal really, and then you wouldn't need cloning or time travel; you'd have all the time in the world to try out everything that catches your fancy. But I suppose there are drawbacks to that too . . . or so they say. (Immortality: It's all fun and games until your sun supernovas. But wouldn't that be a quick death anyway? And come on, immortality lasts forever, even if you don't have a physical realm in which to exist, right?)

ambition

Ambition a: an ardent desire for rank, fame, or power b: desire to achieve a particular end. Applies to the desire for personal advancement or preferment and may suggest equally a praiseworthy or an inordinate desire.

"Ambition makes you look pretty ugly. Kicking, squealing, gucci little piggy." Paranoid Android, Radiohead

Can you read this graphic? Ambition: Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars. Or the unimaginable hideous gaping void of space. One of the two.

Several people have called me "ambitious" recently. It sure beats "passive-aggressive," but it's not a term I would ever have used to describe myself before. These people have meant it as a compliment, but I've always thought it had kind of a negative tinge to it, implying that you're motivated by money, greed, power, and/or that you're willing to get ahead at any cost, even if it means stepping on others along the way.

That's not me. I'm just a girl trying to get ahead in this world. I would love to make more money, sure, but what I really want is to not be bored. I want to stay stimulated, and I want to feel like I'm moving forward in my life. I'm very comfortable in my current job, and I think that alone makes me feel uncomfortable. So perhaps it's time to move on, especially when opportunity knocks so loudly.