OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG

Wow.  And then sometimes, something cool just happens.  You don't deserve it, necessarily, or maybe you do, but SOMETHING COOL HAPPENS.

Like getting an email from the biggest theatre in town asking you to come audition tomorrow for the biggest director in town.  Ok, fair point that the director probably won't be there tomorrow, it'll probably be the casting director, but still...

THE GATEKEEPERS TO WHAT I WANT ARE ASKING ME TO COME GET WHAT I WANT.

Y'all.

I'm freaking out right now. And there's no one I can tell but you.  You, dear reader.

So, stay with me here, I'm gonna tell you a story:

When I finished drama school in the UK, I had to move back to the States, and I chose to move to Chicago to start trying to act.  I arrived in mid-October.  It sucked.  Or rather, it was a very difficult transition.  I was exceptionally sad.  I thought a lot about how much easier it would be to just be dead.  I didn't want to commit suicide, per se, I just thought a lot about how, since I was now away from all the people who cared about me and I was desperately unhappy, being dead seemed like a really great alternative and that seemed like a good time to do it - no one would miss me any more than they did anyway, and I would be free of feeling like everything was meaningless and impossible.

For Christmas, I asked my parents to buy me a ticket to the UK to see my friends for New Year's.  They were sweet about it, but they refused.

I let that refusal sink in for about 24 hours, then I just charged the flight and went anyway.  I had no idea how I'd pay for it, and I was not a person who ever bought things without money to pay for them, but I needed to go.  So I went.

And it was glorious.  It was outrageously fun and happy.  I was gleeful to see my friends, it was a joy to be in the place I'd felt so very happy, and it was a relief to understand my unhappiness was temporary.  I wasn't stuck in it forever.  It was situational, and could still very well have been chemically influenced, but if I could find one way out, then more existed.  That trip kept me going for a long time after that, the way you can endure a prison sentence when you know it will end soon.

Let me be clear - Chicago was not the prison sentence.  The sadness was the prison sentence, and it would end.  I would survive it.  It was a thrilling lesson to learn.  (I worked 7 days a week for the next 6 weeks to pay for it - one of the first balances I ever carried forward.  Within 2 months it was paid off.  Worth every second of work and every penny of interest.)

I tell you all that to tell you this:
I think I need to learn the same thing about being in really cool projects.  Every time one ends, I worry (rightly so, because actors can't depend on anything) that I will never do another, that I will never, in essence, be happy again.

Y'all.  I just got an email asking me to audition for the biggest project in town.  Will I book it?  Oh, who knows, I haven't auditioned yet so I can't tell you how I did.  BUT THEY ASKED ME.  I am a person they ask to do these things.  I'm not sure if my recent audition there is why they asked, or one of my favorite people might have recommended me, or maybe they just saw my picture in the file and said, oh, she's the right age...I don't care why it's finally happening, I just know that for once, a really cool project is asking me if I want a shot at it.

I.  DO.