Yesterday, I just had myself a big ole pity party.
I don’t talk about work on here, but I will say this: there is NOTHING more frustrating than being graded on something you have (MAYBE) 15% control over. When you initiate the basic process, and yet you’re held accountable.. by, say, 200 people .. for the total performance of that process or system? It’s incredibly frustrating. And demeaning. And stressful. And defeating. And after working for fourteen hours yesterday trying to counteract that, I was just DONE.
Then, I headed to rehearsal. God, I needed rehearsal.
And I’m one of those really obnoxious, chronically optimistic people, who is like, “Yeah, I had a really shitty day, but it’s a gorgeous sunset outside!” You know, like the pink and purple ribbons in the sky are going to make all of the bad stuff go away. And I feel stupid even saying stuff like that, but really? It’s all I have to get me by.
That, and the lady at Steak-Out liked my hair. See? BAD DAY, ERASED. (heh.)
So I get to rehearsal and, SERIOUSLY, for about an hour I laughed till I cried. Such funny, funny people in my cast and I know next to none of them well at all. Come to think of it, this is my first show with almost the entire cast. That rarely happens in community theatre. It was a nice way to kind of let the bad stuff go and just relax.
And, in all honesty, be good at something for just a little bit of time.
I realized last night that I need theatre because I consider myself good at it. I mean, I am relatively a dime a dozen in community theatre; a semi-talented female in her late twenties that can play a decent ingenue. I think I have a few qualities that put me a small notch above some: I don’t shy away from physicality, like running entire flights of stairs to belt out a high E or galloping over benches on a moving carousel while 10 weeks pregnant; I have decent comedic timing; and I have really good hair. (The lady at Steak-Out said so.)
And then, last night, when I so needed to just be good at something, to just be successful, and to NOT be a stalwart, I SUCKED. I stopped my entire scene because of something I was scared to do.
I don’t get scared. Ever. I’ve never backed down from ANYTHING onstage.
And I was (and am) so mad at myself for it. For letting fear win, for doubting myself at something I’ve always been good at. For stopping a scene. For causing my scene partner to lose his momentum. For being a diva.
And then, it was suddenly a thing. It was a tech issue, a safety issue, and really? It wasn’t. I was just being scared and weak, and after practicing just five minutes, I was fine and I should’ve just known that from the get-go and stopped my whining. I’ve done harder than that. I’ve been raised better than that. I don’t, nor should I ever, need that coddling.
I hated myself last night. Eighteen hours of failing. At everything I attempted.
The looks, the glares, the disappointment. It ate away at me.
Still does.






