How often do you do something that you’ve never done before? You might be different than me, maybe you’re the type of person who is constantly trying new things. I, on the other hand, am the type of person who settles into my comfortable routine and does not try a lot of new things outside of my comfort zone. I love routines and I love my comfort zone. I think part of it stems from how organized I need to be. I want my days and life to be very structured and planned out. For the most part, each week I spend here at Jamestown looks pretty similar to the last. I don’t need to bore you with a detailed account of my day to day activities, but let’s just say I very much have a schedule that I largely stick to and only stray from it in times of dire straits.
However, for whatever reason this week I agreed to try some new things. It’s not like I woke up on a Tuesday morning and decided to say “YES” to whatever people asked me. I did not go to a self-help seminar to unleash to power of Yes like in the movie. I woke up today and did what I did every Tuesday. At about 7 AM I crawled out of my bed and went to exercise at our gym on campus. After that I had an omelet with ham, turkey, spinach, tomatoes, onions, and cheese made by my favorite faculty member on the entire campus here at the University of Jamestown, Marge. Then I went back to my room, showered, got dressed, and went to the library to read until lunch time. While I was in the library I received a text from a friend of mine who is often in the theater productions here at our college. She said they were looking for some help backstage for their play to be performed the first weekend of November. I’m not exactly the busiest guy on campus, so I thought about it. I also don’t mind doing some good old fashion manual labor every now again. The biggest problem is that the week of practice leading up to the play might cut into my Halloween and weekend fun. But after some tough negotiating (the cast owes me some drinks), I agreed to help.
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I have never voluntarily been involved in a play in any way shape or form here at Jamestown or anywhere else. I was once the star of “The Littlest Reindeer” in Elementary school though. My mom really enjoys theater. She has been in many plays, including musicals, and has even directed a few. I may not be an actor in the play, well actually it’s a musical so for those of you who know me are well aware as to why I was only asked to be a stage hand. I’m pretty sure my job is to move stage props on the set when the lights go off, which I still might be underqualified for but I’ll give it a shot.
An hour or so later while on my way to lunch I was stopped by my roommate and another friend talking in one of the student lounges. The girl my roomie was talking to invited us to an event in Fargo at which Chelsea Clinton will be speaking and Senator Heidi Heitkamp will also be in attendance. A few people here at our college are trying to get a Young Democrats Club started, so those are the people organizing this trip to Fargo. I am normally not a person who likes to get political publicly, so all I will say here is that I am certainly a Democrat and Senator Heidi Heitkamp is my favorite North Dakota politician, so I am excited for this trip on Thursday morning. So this is a pretty out of the box thing for me to go to. I do pay attention to politics, but, like I said, do not particularly enjoy discussing it publicly. My roommate cannot go because it does not fit his schedule, but I am going to go. The people I am going with I have had class with and do get along with but by no means do I hang out with them often. Just that fact would likely have stopped me from going in the past. But hey, why not go.
I figured, hey, what the heck, I won’t have many more opportunities to experience things like this so even if it is out of my comfort zone maybe I should do it. I am in my last semester of college, so I might have missed the boat a little bit with this trying new things when you are young thing. But better late than never right? No matter how much we don’t want it to, life changes after college. Sure, there are still new opportunities after college. But as they say “life happens.” Full-time jobs, families, and community responsibilities all take on a much bigger role. It’s harder to just jump in a car on a Thursday morning and drive to Fargo with a few people to see my favorite local politician. I certainly won’t be in any position to help my friends put on a play by being on the stage crew. For a guy like me who really likes to stick to his routine, those are both experiences I will likely never have again. But I am getting to have them now, and that’s pretty cool.
