Truth?

This is a space with no audience.  I put markings on it and rarely does anyone look at them.  Ironically, the few people who do know it is here do know me in real life, so I still edit what I want to say.  Oh, and of course, I edit what I want to say because I keep hoping someone might read it and be interested.  Or entertained.  Which, face it, does not happen.

Well, today, I say fuck it.  This one's just for me.

If you're offended, fuck off.

I'm getting weighed down by everyone's expectations.  Worse, lots of people lie about their expectations, so I'm weighed down by THINGS THAT DON'T EXIST.

Today, I want to throw away my life and go traveling.  I want to talk to strangers who know worlds I do not, I want to wander down alleys I shouldn't be in.  I want to dance on tables.  I've been running through the world with a sparkler in my hand: today I want a bomb.

I want to exit stage left.

I want to lie to everyone because only people who know the truth can really hurt you.  If I give parts of my story away, it should be to children that I never see again, like a grandma handing out chocolates.  I want to be on the move so that if anyone bores me, anyone says something rude or unflattering, I can simply remove myself to other climes and look for brighter stars.  I want to leave, I tell you.

Someone else can pay these bills, teach these recalcitrant children, go on these endlessly disappointing auditions.  Someone else can get judged and found wanting every day.  Someone else can be told over and over and over again that they don't matter, that nothing they do is unique or special or clever or in any way remarkable.

Someone else can be ordinary.  THE LIFE I HAVE IS NOT BIG ENOUGH YET.

I want to be on a camel somewhere, being eccentric and asking questions and learning things.  I won't own anything, I don't want things, I'll be a do-er.  I want to stretch the corners of what is possible until there is no disappointment left, until I have conquered "no", until to think of something will be to begin working toward doing it.

I WANT OPTIONS BACK.  I want choices, opportunities.  Intellectual rigor, curiousity, intrigue.

Now, how the fuck am I going to bust my actual life open wide enough for all of that? Because if I don't start getting it....

If I don't start getting it...

If I don't start getting it, I've really let myself become the most ordinary, boring, waste of space.

Quibble

I am beginning to be seriously peeved at George R.R. Martin.

Every time I get well and truly invested in a character, he kills that person off.  Every time I have decided a character is truly despicable, he shows me that person's point of view and forces a more balanced view on me.

And worst, often someone dies and I think, NOOOOOO, only to find that for various reasons, that character isn't actually dead.

Now, I don't have to have heroes and villians in black and white, I can see the writerly virtue of never allowing any character to be safe, I can appreciate that bringing someone back from the dead is what's known as a "twist", but...

The fair truth is that if not a single person ever gets to be happy, if everyone simply gets more and more confused, flawed, damaged, and disappointed...

I think I might have to stop reading these books.  Because there's nothing left to enjoy.  Everyone I like is doomed to be killed or to be unhappy.  I find that to be true in life often enough - I might have to give the unrelentingly dour and pessimistic world view of George R. R. Martin a rest.

Hey, if you're enjoying it, I don't need to stop you.  I just need a break.

The Cool Breeze

I get to sing with a 17-piece Big Band tonight.  It's one of my favorite things ever.  The band is made up of completely amazing musicians and the tunes are classic, and everything I get to sing is so much fun.  It is stupendous.

I can rarely hear myself in the space we'll be doing the show, so I can't tell you I am any good, but it is SO MUCH FUN I'm not sure it matters.

Last time we did a show, there were actually college kids who came to dance!  It was super cool - there's almost no room for something like that, but they were all so young and eager, and a couple of them asked me to dance when I wasn't singing, and it was pretty close to a perfect evening.

I may not get quite that close to perfect this time, but I'm excited anyway!  I think I'll wear my blue suede shoes...

Working

Hey!  My tactic is working, sort of!  I've had MORE rejection news, and so far I seem to be able to leapfrog over it.  I just ignore all the "oh-I'm-worthless-and-talentless" noise that usually accompanies the act of being rejected, and I go to work every night doing an awesome project.

It's not failsafe, but it's much more entertaining than getting completely bogged down in my own lack of ability.

Because, when I face up to it, I don't have that much talent to start with.  Some, sure.  But I'm no genius.  I'm not being negative, seriously.  Of course I wish I were a genius, but I think if I were, the acting road would probably be a little easier.  I'm right in the middle of the road, and I hope as time goes by I'll get better.

So, I don't really care whether or not I'm a genius or not.  I love acting.  I love telling stories onstage.  So I'll keep trying to do it.  Since those facts are true, why even bother getting upset when evidence of my inabilities comes around?  Surely I'm better off focusing on either the facts that support my choices (for instance, I'm currently working, performing 6 shows a week at an awesome theatre in an awesome cast of people!), or, when those aren't in evidence, trying to improve myself in some area.

This sounds really easy, and cheerful, and like something I should always do and should have been doing all along.  Ha!  Too true.  I think it shows how truly powerful having work can be.

I have a lot more to say about this, mostly so when I succumb to despair later I can come back and remind myself that I'm being an idiot, but I have to go clean my house - I have guests coming!  Ya-hoo!

Struggling

So, yes, I got bad news.  I got the kind of news that slaps you in the mouth, draws blood, and then laughs at you while you try to keep it together.

I'm not going to lie.  Without getting specific, this news hurts, and it will hurt for a while.  As my husband says, getting dumped always sucks, regardless of who has dumped you for whatever reason.  No one likes being told they aren't wanted.

(Oh, just so you know, this is professional.  My husband is still awesome, and keeps me sane with gifts, love, cuddling, and emotional security.  If he dumped me, I wouldn't write about it, I probably wouldn't be able to function.)

So, bad news.  I feel shitty about it.  But in the past months I've thought a lot about the bitterness I carry around and how it feels like bitterness itself is holding me back - not the things that happened to cause it, but my especial, sometimes overwrought reaction to said events.  I dated someone for 6 weeks once and he dumped me and it took me SIX MONTHS to get over it, and I didn't even like him that much.

At some point recently I stated that I want to put the bitterness down.  To a large extent, the awesome project has let me do that, albeit temporarily.  Now I want to take it one step farther.  I want to avoid the bitterness altogether.

Something happened and it's painful.  If I look at it too hard I will see the message is that I am wasting my time trying to be an actor, that I do not have any talent, that I do not have the ability to tell a story onstage.

I am going to skip this message by no longer looking at this bad news.  I'm gonna skip it completely.  I'm going to find ways to lie to myself about what happened if I have to think of it at all.  If I have to, I will drug my psyche with books to shut the thoughts off.  When, unbidden, this news or news like it comes into my head, I plan to repeat the phrase "let it go" over and over and over until something distracts me.

I don't know how it will work.  But it seems worth a try.  If you need me, I'll just be sitting here on this sofa crocheting and reading Game of Thrones until something good happens.

Much worse

Just when things seem to be looking up, something happens to remind you you're completely worthless.

You can try to figure out how having four years of work rejected can be interpreted in a way that leaves you even a sliver of self-respect.  Good luck.

Much better

Sometimes, you just need everyone to go away and work through some stuff you've left undone for weeks. Then you do the dishes and crank the music up, and life just gets juicer and more vibrant.  You've added the metaphoric equivalent of half and half instead of skim milk.  You've used butter instead of margarine.  You've started listening to soul instead of smooth jazz.

Ahhhh.

I like being alone.  I feel vaguely re-set.  I have a lot of doubts about what I want and how I'm going to get it, even though on the outside, it appears nothing has changed for about twenty years.  I am definitely doubting my ability to function in the world in a relaxed yet purposeful way.  Then I just let the music hit my skin like light and sing along, careless, unworried, and I remember something important.

I know joy.  I know it.  I know where it lives in me, what parts of me are activated by it, and the activities I need to pursue to obtain it.  And more or less, everyone I meet and talk to either helps me find it or obscures it, and I'm not always smart enough to know which is happening at what moment.

But if everyone just goes away, and I'm left to my own devices, I can clear some of the detritus out of the way and get the path really open and clear.  Music helps, as does travel.

Ahhh.  Better.  I'm going to finish the dishes and spend some time alone, and I'm going to love it.