Alright Sports Fans

You know those montage-y frenetic moments in movies or, well, Looney Tunes, where they play “Flight of the Bumble Bee” and everything starts moving insanely quickly?

Well, it’s sorta like that. I feel like saying, Drivers! Start Your Engines!

This morning, Monday of the beginning two weeks of school/work insanity, I emailed my boss at my temp gig and asked her if I could have Wednesday off. I also asked her to get a little more clear with me on when this assignment ends, as it’s really vague, and I don’t like my income hanging on “really vague.” So she said, Yes to Wednesday off, and that she’d love to keep me into January, so let her get back to me on Thursday. So, Okay.

PHEW on Wednesday off – my crazy long day with evening class, and now I can meet with my professor to talk about my final project – due next Thursday. I emailed him this morning too and suggested what I think I might do for my project – it might be a script involving the two heckler muppet dudes. Yep. He wanted creative! I’m thinking of having them, as images of the upper class, watch several scenes from the Shakespeare plays we’ve read this semester – scenes where Shakespeare seems to be calling out the upper class. He’s got a lot of commentary on classism, and I found myself drawn to those pieces in all the works. So, we’ll see. That does not seem like an “easy” thing to do. But, it could be fun – they get all ruffled and heckle-y, and then maybe that bald eagle guy comes in at the end (You can tell I’ve been influenced by the Muppet Movie advertisement at bus stops…)

After I emailed him, I packed up my shit and went to school. I knew that hanging out here would only mean distraction – facebook, cat, tea, nibbling, general procrastinating. Luckily, both the girls I was supposed to meet with this morning cancelled – which was totally HP doing for me what I couldn’t do for myself, as I really didn’t have the time to meet with them, and would likely have been distracted.

So, I went to school, and plunked down in the English Department with my tea, my laptop, and my homework. I got pretty far. (Poem for evening class, two singing critiques for Friday, printed thesis draft.) There’s still a lot to do, but I am feeling better about it.

I have to do a teaching demo on Friday of the workshop I’m piloting in the Spring – “Creativity and Spirituality”. I co-facilitated this workshop last semester with the Director of Spiritual and Religious Life at school, and it went pretty well. So on Friday, I have to demo a portion of the workshop to my professor and my classmates. I’m not too worried about it – but I do need to get my own script down a little more. Leading people through spiritual processes – well, you have to have a degree of confidence in yourself and the work, to come from a calm position, or else people who may already be nervous about WTF is going to happen – am I going to speak in tongues? is there going to be “G-d” stuff? – feel like they are being led by a knowledgeable guide.

Luckily for me, this is all work that I’ve done. Some of the pieces for the full workshop next semester (3 times, 3 hours, for 3 different groups of women) I haven’t done, I’ve created from my own imagination, but I believe in them. The whole workshop is about helping the participants to see that they can access creativity in a variety of modes, and to call that pathway by which they access it “spirituality.” To begin (or continue) to understand that we always have something to say, to give, to create, to invent, because we have the un-tap-out-able well of creativity inside us already – we don’t have to “hunt” for it, “work” for it, we just need to access it.

And sure, it sounds “woo woo” hippie shit, but, I believe it. I don’t always remember it – and try to create from a place of desperation or scarcity – but the real juice is always there.

So, that’s my workshop. I also have 4 reading responses and a final paper to do for this class. … And a final paper and an end of semester portfolio for my poetry workshop.

BUT, on top, next to, in spite of all this – the Universe works without me – often.

I get an email this afternoon while writing with frenzied fingers that a slot opened up in the auditions…and I can get in Sunday at 8:30pm, if I want it.

I want it.

Of course, this week of ALL weeks (cue “Bumble Bee”), I now have to memorize 2 one minute monologues, get my headshots printed, and read up on this Strindberg fellow. But … it’s general auditions for a bonafide theater company in SF for their upcoming season in a bonafide theater – and *I’m* auditioning. Holy Crow.

The very next email I get? From another theater company (no lie) I emailed in my diligent action moment of a few weeks ago. They can’t fit me in this time, but will keep my info on file. Fabulous.

Just when I was beginning to feel like I was watching myself retract from the whole acting thing again, the Universe throws me a bone. I was watching myself follow the pattern of “flurry of action, then nothing, flurry of action, then nothing” – but, this time, with my small little actions, these self care little moments of listening to myself, this comes along. It is just an audition, I have to keep reminding myself, because I get easily scared the f out.

To counter the crazy “I have no idea what I’m doing,” I called in help. I called Lorraine, my acting friend I called a few weeks ago. We just spoke, and she gave me some good tips on the monologues I’m choosing, a classic and a contemporary: Gertrude from Hamlet cuz I just read it– and The Flood from Vagina Monologues cuz I know it, as I’m cast in it at school in the Spring! Plus she gave me head’s up on a place to get my headshots printed in the city, precisely where I will be on Thursday at noon.

So, yeah, I’m alright. A little dazed. But, I did a lot of work today (and some action a few weeks ago) and some unexpected bounty happened. Fancy that.