What's the What?

I spent a chunk of time today writing an email to a friend in which I alternately whined and tried to take responsibility for my whining.

Driving home from an audition, I tried to square two different truths with each other.

The first is that I've always been irritated by people who are unhappy but make no effort to extricate themselves from that unhappiness.  Some unhappinesses are inescapable, of course, grief from a death, job changes, breakups, adjustments from a move, chemical imbalances.  But if you are in a situation that you dislike but make no effort to change that situation, I start to lose patience with you.  I will grant dispensation to those who are unhappy in one situation but find outlets elsewhere - if you have a job you hate, for instance, but you do it to feed your family or fund your travel bug or buy equipment for your photography hobby you love.  I will absolutely buy in to the unhappiness "deal", where unhappiness in one place earns you happiness elsewhere.

I'll also listen with sympathy to the person who is unhappy but is trying different tactics to fix the problem, even if those tactics don't work and the unhappiness persists.

Again, my beef is with the perennially unhappy who make NO CHANGES.  Say you're a stay at home dad but you never ever shut up about feeling emasculated by it.  This is your life and you need to find a way to be ok with it.  Say you're in the corporate rat race and you don't have any time for the things you wish you were doing.  Find a way to love the race or get out.  Say you've always wanted to go to India but your new hi-def tv just absorbed all your disposable income - I have absolutely zero patience for you, sell the damned thing and go do something.

Ah, but today I thought about how, fittingly, I am hoist by my own petard.  My second truth is that I am unhappy that I have absolutely no disposable income because I am an actor and a teaching artist in a rough economy, and there's not a lot of work to be had.  Alternately, I'm unhappy when I'm not spending my time on the acting, I can forgo disposable income when all my free time is occupied with a show.  It's worse than just unhappiness, too - I feel in danger of becoming permanently disappointed, because all the promise I felt I had ten years ago is draining away under the hostile consistency of rejection that being an actor delivers.

(Side note - if you happen to be reading this and you have ever once wished anything bad to happen to me, you have had your wish, time and time again.  There have been so many times I wasn't chosen for something and was left only with the mantra of "what was wrong with me" to pass the time until the next turn on the chopping block - there have been so many times that I truly have no idea what that number is.  I can tell you I did at least 14 commercial auditions this month and booked none of them.  That's a rejection every other day all month.  If you think all actors are self-absorbed twats, we may be, but on the other hand, you try keeping your shit together when you get judged and found wanting nearly every day.  Also, if for any reason you've ever hated me, there is no way you could ever hate me as much as I hate myself some moments. So, if something I wrote here pissed you off, or if I was ever condescending or rude or overly needy or mean or sarcastic or boring, don't worry - I have been repaid in full, and there will always be more coming.)

Back to the point...by my own stricture, the long slow slide into permanent disappointment means it might be time to give it up, to find something else, hell, to just go get a damn job and make money and have this be a fun hobby.

But here's the kicker, for me.  If I give up, actually start spending my time doing something else, I will unequivocally be disappointed.  I might as well tattoo it on my forehead then: THIS PERSON HAS FAILED.  I'm sad a lot now, I have trouble staving off the demons, I sink into a world of self-doubt and inaction, BUT BUT BUT...when the yes comes, when someone casts me in something, or I sing a really perfect line, or I make someone laugh, or someone asks me to be in a workshop of a play, or I have an audition that feels like finally telling a story...it's magic.  It's validation.  It's joy on a scale I can't imagine in any other form.

It's delight.  And delight is transforming.  I can shift and melt and reform into the person I am actually supposed to be, one that has enough personhood to listen to someone else, play with others, love and be happy.

I hate the disappointment.  I hate it.  I don't want to be that, I don't want to feel it, I want to be able to transcend it and I hate myself even more every time it catches me, but if I give up, it wins.  Instead I try to fight it, and when I lose the strength to fight it, I try to live through it and keep it mind that, just like winter, or an evil spell, or a rain cloud, it will lift.  It will lift and it will be spring, or restoration, or sunshine.

So I had two auditions today and someone asked me to be in a workshop, and I have to stop writing to go be in a show.  It's still raining, but I see the horizon lit up over in the distance, and it is beautiful.