Day 42: Who says the party's over?

The Party's Over, Amherst, NH, New Year's Day 2008,

Nikon D40, 35mm focal length equiv. 54mm, Exposure 1/60 sec @ f4.5, ISO 200, with flash, exposure bias -2/3,

 © Steven Crisp [Click on the photo to enlarge]

The party's over.  The friends are gone, the uneaten food has been put away, the dishes washed, and even all those drinking glasses have been cleaned.  Yes, we had some eclectic drinkers that night.

But who say's the party has to be over?  Who says one has to save parties for New Year's Eve, or birthdays, or even just weekends?

Why must it be party and non-party?  Why can't it be all one big continuous party?

I don't mean some drunken-frathouse weeklong-banger.  I mean seeing life as the party.  With all the anticipation, the friendliness, the sociality, the camaraderie, and with enjoyment, all the time, that might otherwise be relegated to those special occasions.

You say the "rest" of your life -- that work-a-day world -- doesn't fit the definition of a party?  Well perhaps that's the thing you need to examine.  What is it you fear about finding work, or making your current work situation, something you enjoy enough that you can consider it to meet the criteria of your life's party?  

I read this blog post called "The Great Fear".  It's a well-written wake-up call to those who have too much inertia, or too many reasons stopping them from being the life of their own party.  But in that blog, I particularly enjoyed this quote about "My Greater Fear":

"For me, I have what I will call, for lack of a better term, My Greater Fear. It is that I will live a perfectly unexceptional existence with this exceptional chance I have been given. My Greater Fear is that I will rot beneath a matrix of fluorescent lights staring at the carpeted walls of a cubicle, or that I will wake knowing exactly what I will be doing every minute of every day for the rest of my waking life, or that I will wait until I am old and enfeebled to give myself permission to live."

Yowsa!  That does indeed sound like the greater fear.  So come on.  Make your life the party you want to crash, and then go crash it!  We only have one ticket for this merry-go-round.  So make the most of it.

• Donation:  to the site of this blog post, the Path Less Pedaled.
• Exercise:  Walking around Einsiedlerhof, Germany on my work trip (15 mins).