Statement, Rev 2

I made a brief Fussbook announcement. A lot of gratifying sad faces and expressions that it won't be the same without me etc. I prefaced it by saying I wrote out a longer version. Now some people want to see that. Why? So they can copy it and get out of going too, I dunno. But anyway the one I wrote yesterday doesn't say what needs saying. I'm here to attempt a rewrite.

It's so much more than a vacation that I feel the people who want to know more absolutely deserve to. It's not too dissimilar from a choir member suddenly quitting church. You don't just say, okay, so will we see ya at the Christmas service? You want to know what's really going on. I got a few PMs to that effect, folks being worried etc.

Man, if I did this as a fishing expedition for virtual hugs it would have been a rollicking success. Fortunately I did not. It was real -- or at least I gotta act like it was.

Why I'm Not Going

I was very busy and kept putting off the work I wanted to do for Burning Man. This included rebuild and repair activity on bikes and on the electric trike, costume design, and enhancements to my camp shelter and lighting. For the last several years I've gone without having managed more than the minimum of these. This year I saw that yet again most of those things weren't happening, but I felt differently about it. Instead of being excited about going anyway, I found myself wondering if I really wanted to go.

Burning Man is a relationship. If you start questioning your place in a relationship, you'd better take a serious look at whether or not you belong there.

A lot of what I find at Burning Man has been showing up in my default life. Amazing friends and social opportunities, art shows and art projects, dancing till dawn ... Not all jammed into one incredible week, but it's out here, and when I started stressing as usual over all the preparation against everything else I had to do, I started wondering why I was doing it. At that point I looked ahead and saw that after all the times I've gone, I'm able to predict more or less how each day will go. Whatever the details, Tuesday will be like this, Thursday like that, and Saturday will be the worst. It had become almost like going on the same vacation every year.

This fatal realization hit right about the time Sunya got the opportunity to make an art installation for TBD Fest. She realized she didn’t have time to do both that and Burning Man, and decided not to go. We hadn't planned to camp together so that wasn't a major issue. But she had a buyer, and I needed to make a decision to sell just her ticket or the entire package. I looked at my broken Jeep and still-broken bikes, at the relative sameness of recent BMan experiences, at projects not yet started in the house I bought this year, at her kids starting at new schools in the middle of the week, and it became clear I had already decided. I just wasn't admitting it.

This is my first break since my first trip in 2008. Burning Man has provided me the space, inspiration, and confidence for enormous growth and change, and my naturally sentimental nature hesitates to let it go. But living and growing, like loving, are exercises in letting go. It is with love that I let go of Burning Man 2015, and with love that I see my friends go without me into that amazing regenerative dust.

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Well, shit. This version is longer. It's supposed to be shorter.