Lucky

Y'all.  The orchestra came in today.

THE NINETEEN PIECE ORCHESTRA.

THE AWESOME, AMAZING NINETEEN PIECE ORCHESTRA.

It's....I just...I wish I had words for how awesome it is to sing with a first rate nineteen piece orchestra in the pit under your feet.  It's incredible.  The word "lucky" has been overused by me in these few weeks, but I don't know how else to quantify this experience.

I just have no idea what day it is anymore.

Look, this job has irritations.  People can act like divas, you have to deal with a lot of rejection and correction, hours can be long for very little stage time, wigs can be particularly painful to wear for ten hours of tech at a time,  and no matter how you cut it, at some point you will be judged by a director or an audience, and either you'll be funny or beautiful or moving or whatever it is the play needs you to be, or you won't.  Falling short of telling the story always feels like the worst failure of all time.  It can be a knife edge to try to explain the world to other people - when you succeed, it's like surfing the emotions of a crowd, you're buoyed by their engagement, but when you lose them, it's you alone on the tug-of-war against the entire audience, the confusion or the boredom or the displeasure like a broiling heat coming off of them.

It can be lonely and desperate.  It can play on your worst fears, it can tear you apart.

But.  Then, one day, you stand up on an enormous stage in beautifully tailored clothes, and an orchestra plays a beautiful glissando, and you disappear inside a story that's really fun to tell, alongside people who also enjoy telling it.

I don't know what else to call it.  I feel lucky.