Blow it up and start again

This is post number 200 for me.  I liked the idea of ending the year on a round number, so I saved it for today.  I'm just not sure how best to use it.

I don't have any regular readers - though I do have a handful of incredibly sweet intermittent ones, of course, to whom I am grateful.  But mostly I keep this as a journal - mostly I keep it for myself, I suppose.  The blog's original purpose was to flirt with someone without appearing to flirt with him, then it became a nice outlet for some frustrations of working with a specific group of people, then morphed into a way to use downtime at an office.  

But as soon as I started using this space to complain about anything I realized I could never really publicize it - I wanted to be honest about how I felt but not hurt anyone's feelings, and while I don't use anyone's real name, I think there's probably enough info that someone could work out certain details.  So I can't tell anyone it's here lest I've said something that will offend, or I could tell people it's here but then never say anything truthful again.  As for my possible offensive comments, I've just been blowing off steam - I don't have any lasting rancor for anyone, honest.  I'm capable of wishing everyone happiness and joy, no matter what.  

Anyway, I lost the desk job, and didn't post anything for a long time.  I got caught up on the fact I had so few readers, who would care if I wrote anything?  I love my 5-6 readers, but I am pretty sure I could call each and everyone one of you up on the phone if there was something I really needed to say to you.  But finally I realized: clearly, I only post things I am trying to work out for myself.  So I got busy trying to work some stuff out, and here we are at 200.

Am I working things out?  Does the effort of writing things down help me process and transmute those events?  Is it just a really really long-term flirt...as in, someday, out of curiosity, my original reader will return and be blown away by my charm, wit, and insight?  Ha!  Funny, I'm capable of wishing for that (though it's not my conscious purpose).  I've gone from thinking I'm kind of a nice person to realizing I often behave like an insufferable know-it-all driven entirely by the wish to be right and the only partly submerged desire to be gorgeous.  In other words, I'm realizing I'm vain, petty, and condescending.  

But I'm not mean-spirited.  And yes, writing things down has been helping me.  

So I'll probably rack up another hundred posts this next year.  Maybe the writing will get better.  Maybe the insights will get deeper.  Maybe the life I'm describing will get more entertaining.  

Thanks for stopping by.  Comments are welcome.  I'm not asking you for anything, but I'm very grateful for what you've given me without being asked.  

Happy New Year.  This one...this one's going to be amazing.

Enveloped

I just finished reading a novel and eating a bunch of tasty food, including lots of chocolate.  Ah, holiday.  Now I'll need to put all that slothful indolence behind me and get busy refining myself.  I'm looking forward to it, actually.

I'm looking forward to everything right now.  It's been a strange year, plenty of setbacks and trials, naturally lots and lots of mistakes.  Mine, I mean.  And some loss - people dying is no fun, even if it is a completely natural part of life that we all have to face eventually.  Doesn't mean we long for it.

I feel hopeful, though.  Like I'm closing in on something, and when I get there, it will be good.  I got a good breather in here with this awesome show I'm working on - I can keep going for a lot longer with this under my belt.

To everyone who made my life better and not worse: thanks.  I'm cheering up now enough to notice how lucky I am to know you.  Wow, I'm really lucky sometimes.  Thanks.

Gifts

Oog.  The one thing I do dislike about being relatively short on cash is that Christmas sucks because I can't afford to buy anyone gifts.  I know I sound holier-than-thou or disingenious, but I really like giving people the "perfect" gift, and though yes, the perfect gift might not be expensive, it does take a certain amount of money to get EVERYONE a perfect gift.  Or more time than I currently have.

This is why I've begun to prefer Thanksgiving.

For Later

Things my future self should know, or might need to be reminded of:

• It might be a while before you get cast in something as awesome as the awesome project again.  Don't despair.  Don't stop trying.  You love it, you love it more than all of the other things people tell you to love - it's the closest you get to storytelling, it's the closest you get to God, it's the closest you get to some sense of purpose.  You inhabit yourself those rehearsal rooms, on those stages.  Don't give that up because you get tired of waiting.  It's yourself you are waiting for, not the next job, because you truly live in the plays.  Feel free to find a better way to amuse yourself in between times, but don't stop trying.  You love it in a way that means it should be your job - because you'll care about it.
• Try to relax.  You're only going to get older from here.  Try for dignity and grace.  You've spent a large part of your life sad and disappointed about all the things you're not.  LET IT GO. There are a lot of things you are not.  But inherent in that is that you are something.  Concentrate on that, meditate on that.  You are something.  Distill it if you can.  Transcend it if you can.  But start stepping on the stones that are there instead of mourning the ones that are absent.
• Honestly? You're bad at giving things up.  At letting them go.  Think of it as habitual lateness - you need to set the clock ahead a bit to accommodate your natural inclinations.  It will take extra time to let some things go.  Go ahead and accept that.  
• You're still going to be a complete fool.  No matter how hard you try, how much you mask it, you heart is bigger than your brain.  You pretend it isn't, you spend a lot of time hiding one behind the other.  Good luck with that.  I'm not sure how that's going to work out.  I'd say let's blow it wide open, future self, let's just love as hard as we can, but there's a lot of pitfalls there and if I knew how to avoid them we'd be somewhere totally different by now.  I guess you should just get more comfortable with the idea of being foolish.  Settle in.  
• You're going to need some more luck for everything to work out the way you want it to.  But if you stick with doing the things that bring you joy, things will work out.  It's like wanting to be at the table where everyone is laughing - spend your time with the joy, and you can't regret it.  

When in doubt, look for some joy.  If you find it, that's where you should be.  All right, future self.  I hope you're reading this and thinking, oh, yes, that was the day I figured out how to get here, and you look around at your sunny kitchen that always has good music, good friends, and good food, pets and maybe children hanging around the kitchen table (the one you've had sex on), and you think, yes, I got here, finally.  Now smile and go make a cup of tea.  Here's to being something, finally.

Rethink

I'm getting the feeling that I have a consistent amount of idiocy no matter what I try to stop myself from doing - if I decide I'm going to quit doing one stupid thing, I inevitably end up doing something else stupid. As if instead of losing weight I'm just using a corset to shove the extra stupid around.

Well.  Hmm.  I'm working hard to be a grown up here, and it's worrying to see regression instead of growth.

But (hang on, my metaphor isn't dead yet), doing stupid things is a lot like eating junk food - empty calories, of course, but so tasty and irresistible.

Side note - if every unhealthy choice had a healthy choice sitting right next to it, for instance, the counter of Little Debbie Snack Cakes had a container of celery sticks right next to it, could you/I/one go ahead and do the "right" thing more consistently?

It may be that when I was younger I tried to avoid doing stupid things, and for the most part I did ok - of course I did some stupid things but overall I basically wasted the part of my life where people expect you to do stupid things.  I spent it trying to get things right.

Now I have certain things right and it's...it's...   Well.  Being right isn't always very interesting.

It's as if I worked so hard to color inside the lines, and look, I did!  And what I have to show for it is a really neat, uninspired set of drawings that anyone could have produced.

Oh, sorry, in case I haven't mentioned it, I am also still deliriously happy to be going to rehearsal every night.  It's awesome.  It's terrific.  It is NOT in any way stupid or drawing inside the lines or...in fact, it's the one thing everyone probably thought I was stupid to pursue and it's the very best thing there is, which may be why I'm questioning everything else.

Ok, I'm going to try to pretend to be a grownup.  For a while.

Notes from Nirvana

It was like I'd died and gone to an actor heaven.

Last night, first rehearsal for the big awesome project.  It was...blissful.  Terrific. Inspiring. Enriching.

It was like sitting down to a meal after wandering in the desert for weeks.

It was like finally sleeping after a forced march.

It was like curling up under the covers with a great book and nowhere to be, when you can't imagine a single place better.

It was such a relief.  To be in a room with maybe 40, 50 people, and all of them want one single thing: to tell this story as well as humanly possible.  Everyone's excited, everyone's looking forward to it, and some of the best brains in the Chicago theatre were in that room.  It was fantastic.

It felt like home.  Home.  Home.

HG, grad school has nothing on this.  This was like bringing the Titanic up from the ocean floor and restoring her to all her glory.  This was like finally getting every single strand of Christmas lights to work.

This was great.  I am sooooo lucky.  Buckle up, all four of you.  It'll be five months of this much excitement and more.

And maybe, just maybe, if some star is positioned just right for me, this is the beginning of the life I always wanted to have.

Deep Breath

So, tomorrow is a big day.  I start rehearsing for a project I can actually believe in, with people I highly respect.  I get to be one of the people I'm always jealous of.  I get to play with people whose careers I want to model, I get to work on a play I am excited to be a part of, with people who blow me away.

I'm scared, of course, and grateful, and thrilled, and god I hope I have whatever it takes to play on this level.  Because I'm not a gamer kind of gal, but this is most definitely a level up.  Level. Up.

Naturally, I want to spin some kind of imaginative direct bee line from tomorrow to me accepting some sort of Tony or Emmy or some nonsense - and I say nonsense not out of false modesty, but with the acceptance that the trajectory I'm currently on just doesn't logically follow to those points.  But that doesn't even matter.  I was thrilled to audition for this play, and I tried very hard to prepare myself for not being cast, since numerically and historically, my acting career (and to some degree, my life) has been about trying to withstand disappointment.

But, and I'm not even embarrassed to say this, I'm nearly teary-eyed with this, TOMORROW IS A DAY ABOUT GETTING WHAT I WANTED.  About being the person they chose.  About finally catapulting over the endless judging and auditioning and rejection and instead being able to focus on the WORK.  Because I got work, folks.  I got work at a theatre I adore with people I revere and I couldn't be luckier or happier.

I got the work I wanted and I cannot wait to give this theatre my entire life for the next five months.

I know I whine a lot here.  I bitch and moan and cry, and when I read the things I wrote, I feel petty and small and weak.  I wanted to write this post to remind me and anyone who ever drops by that I know how to be happy, wickedly happy, joyously happy.  I'm even pleased tonight to realize and remember that I've felt like this before, because I've been lucky enough to get cast in plays I cared about before, even if it has been a while since that happened.

I'm still worried about my Dad and anxious about money and I yearn for the people who made me smile that are missing from my life.  But at the same time, starting tomorrow, I am the luckiest girl in the world for a time.

Now, let's see if the next five months of posts can reflect that.  Heh.