The Look-Good.

I was with a group of close friends on Friday night, celebrating one of their “not getting drunk and sleeping with strangers” anniversaries. These are women I’ve known for nearly my whole 8 years of not doing the same, and who know me and have seen me through my best and worst. 

And I couldn’t tell them the truth. 

It wasn’t until the assembled group was about to close that I got up, walked to the podium at the front of the room and said, “This is the place you’re supposed to tell the hard things. And, things are really bad.”

I began to sob. I eeked out that 5 months ago, I burned my life down, and I’m exhausted and isolated. I told the group that I realized I had to say something when, tonight, I couldn’t hold eye contact with my friends over our dinner. That the closest women I have in my life, I couldn’t look at for too long, because if I did… they would see… and I would break down crying. 

And I didn’t want to do that. 

Because it doesn’t feel like there’s anything to do. So, why talk about it?

I told them about being an expert at looking good on the outside, and feeling like dog shit on the inside. Now, the thing about the “look good” is that, sure, who doesn’t want to look good? Especially when you are feeling crappy, sometimes it’s nice to say, Well, at least I can still pull myself together. At least I can assemble an outfit, put on a little makeup, and … look good. 

However, the other thing about the “look good” is that generally, if you look good, people assume you feel good. And that’s part of the guise of it, of course; that’s part of its purpose… is to fool people. Because if no one asks, you don’t have to tell. 

It’s a pretty little prison we wrap ourselves up in, in an effort to try to do it alone. Because, again, what else is there to do?

In my case, I’m going on interviews, auditions, tours of school, taking tests, ordering physics books. I’m going about the wildest flurry of activity, the other day, I called it a blizzard. 

All this manic pushing to get out of my current situation that I feel ashamed I got into again. Molly, quitting another job without a plan. Molly, struggling to find work, again. Molly looking into a hundred different career paths, and feeling like a strung-out shell of a person through it all. 

Because, as I said earlier: Things are really bad. 

There’s a lot of crying, a lot of hopelessness, a lot of just trying to make it through these extended, exhausting retail days. 

A co-worker I’ve been sharing some of my, “Someone get me out of here” activities with said yesterday that shouldn’t this (the retail job) feel laughable in comparison to what I’ve been through? (She knows about the cancer.) And I said, No. 

Instead, it feels like, “Haven’t I been through enough that I shouldn’t have to deal with this fucking bullshit?” That’s how it feels. 

It feels like I push and try and explore and push and try and explore, and nothing moves. 

I feel like the hamster on the wheel, working so fucking hard, and getting no where. 

I will say that this new idea to pursue teaching feels like the first thing that makes real and doable sense in all my career lily-pad hopping. So, that feels like a win, and progress, and hope. 

And in the center of that remains the fact that my feet and legs ache, right now, I’m earning half what I did when I was at my office job, I have a dwindling savings account that was really fucking hard-earned, and I have no back-up.

So. What? Why do you talk to anyone about that anyway? No one really has anything to tell you of use, except, “We love you and you’ll get through this.” … And take that to the bank. 

But, no. It’s fabulous that I have people around me, and I know there’s something to telling the truth, and so I did. When I realized I couldn’t look my best friends in the eye for fear they might see the truth of what’s happening beyond the “look good,” it was time to say something. (Though, perhaps earlier could have been better, too.)

Did they particularly have anything that shorn through the bleakness in which I find myself, again? Not really. No magic bullets. No words of enlightenment. Just simple suggestions like, Go to a meeting everyday with people who actually know you, and share about this. 

And so, I am. 

I hate it. I feel vulnerable, and I want everybody to not talk to me about it afterward — but there’s no controlling people. 

Because here’s the undercurrent of all this surface nonsense, all this struggle to stay and get afloat and to try to believe that things will change and get better if I keep doing "the next right thing," that life will even out, that I'll be okay...: 

The undercurrent is: I. Don't. Know. That. (None of us do, surely.)

But, specifically, I'm talking cancer. I have a lot of cancer grief to go through, and I don’t know how. 

Partly I don't talk about it because I feel it's so dramatic to talk about, because I'm scared people will roll their eyes, and think, "Sheesh, enough with the cancer already; you lived, didn't you? Move on!" 

I don’t know how to share with people about how angry, betrayed, and every day still terrified -- with every cough, or sleepless night, or strange headache -- about a recurrence I feel. 

I don’t know how to begin to put faith back into a universe and a universal law that arbitrarily may decide to kill you "just cuz." How to “come to believe that a power greater than ourselves can restore us to wholeness” when everything solid was ripped from under me in an instant. 

And that’s what I’m being asked to do. I’m at the point, again, where I’m supposed to contemplate my idea of a “higher power,” and I want everybody to take their, “It’s the cycle of life and death,” it’s love, it’s community, and shove it with red hot poker down their own throats. 

Because: Fuck. You. (non-cancer having people, she mumbles mentally.)

I am going at all this activity pretty much on my own, without the guidance and space of meditation, without a wisp of a belief in the goodness of the world, or in the belief that efforts bring results. 

And it’s really hurting me. 

There’s a lot of work I’m going to have to do on this, and I feel SO TIRED. I’m so tired. Have you fought cancer and then had to go about the daily business of living, getting parking tickets and paying bills you can’t afford? And are you now being asked to reconcile that traumatizing experience with a belief in goodness or constancy in the universe in order to stay sober and not kill yourself?

Few of us have. And I don’t know how to do it, because I don’t know who to turn to. 

And so, I’m doing this -- or have been trying to do this -- all alone, in many ways. Sure, I’m reaching out, and the shell of isolation is cracking, and I imagine “good” things will come of it. But for now, I’m just so tired. 

So that’s what’s beyond the “Look-Good,” friends. It’s not pretty, or happy, or palatable for many, including myself. It’s sad and raw and real and really fucking painful to be where I am right now. 

And… if one of you tells me “this too shall pass” or "everybody dies sometime," i’ll shove an iron through your cranium.

(Because it is small comfort, even though it’s true.)

"It's not about the applause."

I’m doing it again. This “auditioning” thing. 

It makes me nervous, giddy, excited, daunted, and happy, underneath all the neurosis. Seems I’m the perfect image of an actor, then, eh?!

But really. I was thinking about it when I was in To Kill A Mockingbird recently, about tweaking the title of Lance Armstrong’s memoir, “It’s not about the bike”: It’s not about the applause. 

At the end of the show, the performance, onstage, when I come out for my bow, I don’t really hear it. Adrenaline in my ears, it’s part of a wall of sound crossed with Charlie Brown's teacher’s voice: Wah Wah Wah. It's the briefest moment. Shorter than an orgasm. It can't be why you do it. 

It’s not about the applause. 

Because in the moment that the audience is able to reflect on what they’ve seen and pass judgement positive or negative, they’re already out of the moment — and that’s not what this acting thing is about for me. 

Not that I have much experience! But from that which I do, I realize that it’s more about what’s happening in the moment of performance with the audience, the experience created with them in real time. Whether that’s engagement, boredom, emotional stirring. 

For me, those moments of connection are what it’s about. To create a space and an environment for others to have an emotional experience they otherwise might not have had that evening. 

For me, it’s always been about that. From poems written years ago that highlight my desire to incite a revolution or evolution in people through performance. 

You can hear it from the stage. Whether the audience is holding their breath, gasping at a sudden revelation. Or crying, you can hear the sniffling. Or laughing, or that one person in the audience who laughs harder than others, or is trying not to laugh because no one else is. 

It’s this petrie dish of human experience. How will they respond, react, be moved, if at all?

I love it. I love being a part of it. I love having a small hand in moving people, of allowing them the moments of anonymity in the dark theater to be moved. That intimacy, even though I will never see their faces. That authenticity they get to experience, even though they paid for it. 

Isn’t that what Aristotle spoke of when he said theater was a catalyst of mass catharsis?

So in those few moments when I’m timing when to step out and down to the apron of the stage, and for a moment be Molly instead of character, it’s like stepping out as the man behind the curtain in Oz. Like seeing how a magic trick works. 

It’s lovely and I won’t fein that it isn’t bolstering to get applause, but I rush that part in my head, braced against it somehow, not really hearing it, just trying to bow and let the next person have theirs. 

Sure, it’s gratifying as we, the whole cast, stand there hands clasped over our heads, knowing that this sound is a show of appreciation and gratitude and approval. 

And I won’t say I don’t like it or hope for it. But. 

It’s not about the applause. 

The Miracle of 12 - 13 - 14

“I’m getting married on 12/13/14,” I half-joked to my coworker early this year.

I just love the order, the numbers, the unique fact that consecutive dates like that won’t happen again until 2103 (1/2/03).

My favorite time of day? 12:34.

Although "5:55" is another favorite, because my brother and I used to stand in front of the microwave (the only digital clock in the house then), look at the time and announce, “Five fifty-five!” and then lean over sideways, our heads upside-down, and announce, “Fifty-five five!” and then stand up straight and do it again: 5:55!! 55:5!!

I love that kind of order and ease, palindromes, sequences.

THREE POINT ONE FOUR ONE FIVE NINE – I THINK PI IS MIGHTY FINE!, is one our mother taught to us.

And so, when early this year, I looked at the calendar and saw that one of these special dates was coming up, I declared to my coworker that would be my wedding anniversary date.

Now, this was, say June, maybe? No boyfriend. No prospects. It would be a short engagement! But I figured, What the hell, it’s always good to declare things to the Universe. Why not?

And 6 months later, yesterday, it hit. December 13th, 2014.

No, I did not get married. Alas.

But I did get something else. An outpouring of love that rivals the strongest romantic connection:

Yesterday, you all erased my cancer debt. In 36 hours. Less than two days. Poof! Gone. Done. Finished. Eliminated.

FREE.

Yesterday evening, I became free. Because of the love and generosity of you, my friends, your friends, and even people I barely know.

One of the donors is a woman I helped at my sales job this week. A brand new woman I hit it off with, and happened to mention the launch of the campaign on Friday.

“Send me the link,” she said. And she donated, too.

Over 60 people contributed to the campaign, not to mention the shares and “likes” and “We’re with you” emails and messages.

In 36 hours. It’s done. Something that has harangued me since I got sick is over. Something I put in every monthly budget and calculate how long it will take, and that I can never move from my apartment with that debt. Something I was shackled to. 

Until yesterday. 

Now, I have to wait for the campaign to officially close in January, and for the crowdfunding site to take their cut and then send me the donations.

But then, I get to write a check to my landlord. And I get to say, Yes, it’s time to clean out that janitor room–cum art studio, unstick the windows, clean out the dried cat poop, put a lock on the door, and hand me a key. 

And then I get to move my art supplies up. Out of my closet. Out of random drawers.

The half-started art projects, the oil paint, acrylics, and embossing gun, the colored pencils, and easel, and oil pastels, collage magazines, glue sticks, stamps and stickers, brushes and sketchpads and canvases, exact-o knives and glitter.

All of this. All of this hidden away in my studio apartment closet. All of this out. Up. Lit. Alive. With me, available to me. Creation incarnate.

I get to m o v e  o n.

12 13 14.

I didn’t get married yesterday. But what is a wedding except a display of love, commitment, hope, cherishment?

On 12/13/14, I absolutely received that. Your love, your hope, your belief in me.

Wow.

And: Thanks. 

A Kick Start.

Well, folks. Tomorrow I will publish my indiegogo campaign to help me pay the back-rent accrued when I was in chemo.

It’s been a short, strange, and amazing process. About 2 weeks ago, I was sitting with a friend in a café, both of us “applicationing,” online searching, looking for work, looking for authenticity.

I said to him, “You know my favorite thing I ever did? I hosted this group art show in SF.”

I showed him the LocalArtists Productions page, practically defunct and way out-dated. I told him how successful it was, people came, people who didn’t know they could sell their art sold their art. I even sold some!

People laughed, ate, met, mingled. It was divine.

I then told my friend that I haven’t painted much since then. That I can’t really in my small apartment with a cat who likes to walk over wet paint. I told him about this art studio I found while exploring the 4th floor of my apartment building, and how I’d inquired to my landlord about it, and how he’d said, yes, I can rent it for $25 a month(!!!), if I pay off my back rent.

Almost $4000 now. Out of work for 6 months, only working part time after that. I racked up quite the debt. And have been slowly paying it back. But…

Here’s where lightning struck. My friend said to me, “You should do a Kickstarter. This is exactly the kind of thing people use crowdfunding for."

I looked at him, stunned, quizzical, a little vague. I tilted my head, trying to process what was just said, offered, opened up before me.

I replied, incredulous, “I guess people would donate to a cancer survivor who wanted to make art again, wouldn’t they?”

And so it was, 2 weeks ago we started something new.

Planning meetings, a few video shoots, a lot of “omigod, I’m not even wearing any make-up, I wish I’d smile, I look awful” moments. And it’s done. It’s being polished, and tomorrow morning, I will push this campaign out into the world in the hopes that others will actually feel something from it.

In the hopes that I can stop writing “back-rent” in my monthly budget. In the hopes that I can sever that weight of debt from that time in my life.

As I sat with my friend going over the language in the campaign, we have been talking a lot about “closing the cancer chapter.” And I turned to him and said, “This isn’t closing it, you know? This doesn't make it 'over.'”

There is no “closed” when it comes to cancer. I’m in remission. I’m 2 years into the 5 year “almost as healthy as normal people” period. But it’s never closed. It can be moved on from in many ways, but the simple existence of the campaign itself is proof that I’m willing to move into the world in a way I wasn’t before cancer.

Everything I do is in reaction to it.

I told my friend, tearfully, that this campaign is important. It’s helpful. But it isn’t the end. The “closing the chapter” is a great sound-byte, and I’m using it. But it was important for me to say to him, “Not quite.”

For better or worse.

I am proud of the strides I’ve made since being sick. I’m proud of the advancements and actions I’ve taken – being in a band, singing, being in plays, a musical, going to Hawaii, Boston, Seattle, trying dating again, flying a goddamned plane! – and I’m overwhelmed by the support I have gotten.

But, it’s so hard to sit with the reality that I am who I am because of what I went through.

I still get nervous when I get a sore throat, cuz that’s how I was diagnosed. I still have to keep extra tabs on my health insurance. I still have a butterfly-shaped scar on my chest where the chemo tube went.

And last week I put on a sweater I hadn’t worn in a while, and pulled a strand of hair caught in it. The hair, my hair, was long, past shoulder length. It was from before I was sick. Before my hair fell out.

It was like seeing a unicorn. Evidence of a mythical time. A time called, “Before.”

It existed. I existed.

The cancer chapter isn’t closed. I don’t know if it ever does.

That doesn’t mean that I don’t take action and strides and make use of the persistent lesson to live.

I am proud of the woman I have become and continue to evolve into. I know she exists now. And maybe she always did. 

Re-Ignition.

Unstructured time isn’t the best for me, and yet I am feeling a bit panicky about my upcoming full-time employment in sales starting on Tuesday. What has been lovely about this time, besides the “brain space” I spoke of the other day is that I’ve gotten to take my long walks again, meet up with my folks again, play with my cat again.

I’ve enjoyed being unemployed, though I know it’s not sustainable.

On that note, though, I’ve been meeting up to "co-work" at cafes with a friend also looking for work and get some applicationing done. This has led to conversations, which have led to ideas, which are leading to action. Particularly around things that “light me up.”

Such as the long-lost “LocalArtists Productions” I started a few years ago, which hosted a successful group art show, but in which I put too much of my own money and ended up in a pickle. Since then, I’ve sort of let that idea drift. But talking to my new friend about what lights me, I said, “My favorite thing I’ve ever done? This group art show I put on.”

Even as I sat listening to my friend at her CD release party the other week, I looked around the space. I came home and looked up the rental costs for that space: this could be a great place to host another one.

I love bringing people together, people who “normally would not mix.” I’ve met so many types of artists on my path – poets, writers, painters, photographers, musicians, actors – that it only makes sense that I bring them together. “Oh, you make jewelry, my friend does still photography, maybe you can work together.” “You’re a painter, my friend just participated in an open studios, maybe you can talk to her about getting your work out there.”

There are too many opportunities to learn from and collaborate with each other. I don’t want us to miss any!

So, I may be starting a Kickstarter campaign soon. To pay off my back rent (accrued when I was in chemo) so that I can rent out the art studio space on the 4th floor of my apartment building. I said to my friend over our laptops, “Yeah, people would be willing to donate to a cancer survivor who wants to produce art again, wouldn’t they?”

They’re slightly different avenues I’m beginning to chase down again: One is the studio space I want to rent so that I can start working again. The other is the creation of a space for artists to get together, these events and gatherings that I love to host.

I feel putting grease behind one will help with the grease behind the other. And so, before I start my full-time work on Tuesday, my friend and I are going to brainstorm about the video, and maybe even get to making it.

Because time is ticking away and we all have art to make and people to meet. 

Spiritual Echolocation

I am not the best judge of my progress or my abilities. But, even though I can’t rightly see myself, I’m beginning to notice that I am hearing it from others.

And this in itself feels like progress: At least I’m hearing it.

There was a time when I described compliments as one of those bug zapper lamps people hang on their porch. The bugs merely get within range of the lamp and they get zapped dead. Same with compliments for me: Anything positive that was said would get deflected before it even got close to touching me. None of that here, pew! pew!

I'd said that you can’t receive a compliment if there’s no complementary place within you to receive it. If there’s nowhere it fits within your own understanding of yourself, then there’s no way that it can be accepted. There’s no ring of truth, because you don’t believe it yourself.

Time passed, and I’ve become more able to receive positive feedback about certain things, because I have begun to hone and cultivate the place within me that is receptive, the place within me that believes you because I believe it myself.

That said, there’s room for growth.

This week, I’ve had several experiences where I’ve been told about my progress and abilities, and even though I can’t quite feel this, I’m beginning to recognize that I believe them, I believe others are seeing this, even if I'm not myself.

Hence, spiritual echolocation. I can’t see it myself, but I believe in the feedback I’m receiving – so there must be something to it.

I know that feeding off external validation is not the way to walk about the world, but what it’s doing for me is giving me hope that one day I can see it. There is an existence of a cave wall. Others are telling me so. If that is truth, there is hope that I will see it, too.

On Friday night, after the first act of our opening night of To Kill a Mockingbird, the director came backstage. He was beaming. He was so glad and proud of the work I was doing on-stage.

I was dubious. But I thought Wednesday’s preview night went much better; it felt better.

He told me he was the only rightly judge of my performance, and Friday night, I was better.

Whether I felt it or not.

On Saturday morning, I went for my semi-regular voice lesson. And at the end of a phrase I’d sung, my teacher applauded and cheered – he even gave me a high five.

“Did you hear that?” he asked, delighted.

No, I didn’t. I can’t hear myself.

The noise and buffer between what is and what I perceive is loud and thick.

“We’re going to have to record you more then,” he said. “You have to get used to hearing yourself.”

This morning, I was on the phone with my mentor, and I reported these incidents to her, as I begin to parse out these places where I’m being told one thing, but I’m hearing and sensing another.

She, too, had told me that I’m farther along than I can feel. And she gave me a metaphor (because we all know I love those!):

She told me I am a tree creating deep, deep roots. A solid foundation. And you can’t always see that growth above ground, but it’s happening.

We were talking (again) about my questioning of where and who I am this lifetime and where I’m going. And she said, some people have really gorgeous foliage, and weak roots.

We’re doing the work now -- early, some might say -- that others come to in mid and later life. Creating a root system, carving out the rot, cleaning the wounds.

Like a field of asparagus, you don’t see its heroic work until one morning you turn, and the whole field has sprouted green, fully formed, like Athena.

I am not used to hearing or seeing myself clearly. I’m not adequately armed with the ability to track my own progress. And thank god for other people, then!

But I do feel the promise and the hope of their reflection. I am beginning to hear what they’re saying instead of zapping it, because I'm beginning to uncover the place within me that believes it myself.

I’m starting to open to a truth that’s been, and is, hard for me to swallow:

I am worthy. 

Still?

While waiting backstage last night for a long scene I’m not in to finish, I leafed through an old book of opera history, the only book in the room.

In it, are pages and pages of photos, and I was struck by how similar everyone looked to today. Yep, there’re the same cheeckbones, facial structure, haughty gaze we still see in others and starlets today. Some of the photos were dated 1898.

Over a hundred years ago, people looked relatively the same. They portrayed the same stories of love, hatred, betrayal, and sacrifice. And I commented to the other actor who was also waiting backstage on how shockingly similar we looked, and how our stories, our desires haven’t changed for tens of thousands of years. Mythology and the Bible tell the same stories, and people probably looked relatively similar too.

Sure, we might be a little more refined about it, not sacrificing goats or children as often. Not slaying enemies in the street. But for the most part, looking back through time, we’re the same people we were thousands of years ago.

And my co-actor said something that struck me: Well, yeah, because we have the same brains we’ve had for thousands of years.

For some reason, this made me pause, and things clicked into place in my head. We’ve been retelling these stories through pictoral, oral, and written history for eons. Homer wrote about the same passions and impulses as Shakespeare as Langston Hughes as Brene Brown.

We’ve all been processing the same emotions for millennia. There’s something kind of humbling and shocking about that realization. Perhaps even a little bit disheartening! But mostly, I think, connecting.

It makes all humanity more relatable.

I remember reading a story of a therapist who was going to be working with a group of Rwandan refugees. She was worried that she wouldn’t know how to relate to them, how she would be able to talk to them about what they’d been through because it was so alien to her experience.

What she found was charming: Her first client wanted to talk about how the guy she had her eye on was hot for her cousin.

We all have the same impulses. We all have the same chemistry and wiring, inhibitions and ambitions. Beyond the length of recorded time, we’ve all been trying to make a go at this thing called life.

And I find that oddly comforting. 

Moving the water-cooler.

I was at dinner with a friend on Tuesday night, election night. And she was dispirited by how little she’d gotten to talk with anyone about the election, the issues, what’s going on in our area. That it’s just not the water-cooler chatter that's around her. That there’s a part of her intelligence that doesn’t feel fueled and fed in the current iteration of her life.

I replied that I knew precisely how she felt. That there are conversations I don’t have any more on an intellectual level, not just by being out of school, but by being out of the groups who talk about topics that make me think (beyond the emotionally intelligent conversations I can have until the sun burns out).

I told her there was an informal dinner a friend from grad school hosts every Wednesday, and how for 2 years now, I continue to get his weekly invitations. I haven’t gone once.

Well, that’s not true. I went once, with an ex, and he felt awkward, so it was awkward, and we left. But I have a feeling that dinner’s one source of the higher conversations I want to have.

Meanwhile, this morning I get a text from a friend saying it’s her annual birthday party this Saturday. She’s the founder of a non-profit that provides medical birthing supplies to women in Africa, and has visited more times than I can count. I can see from my text history that she invited me last year, and the year before, and I still haven’t gone.

My friend at dinner on Tuesday night challenged me to accept an invitation to events like these. To go, to meet, to talk, to learn, to be sparked. To see if there’s a level of conversation I can have beyond my normal scope.

I haven’t wanted to go alone. But that’s usually the best way to meet people. And so, today, this morning, I replied that I would be at my friend's birthday party this weekend.

I can’t attend the Wednesday dinners at the moment because of rehearsal, but I promised my Tuesday friend I would go after they finish.

It’s not that these opportunities aren’t available. It’s that I’m scared to go. Scared I can't keep up. That I don't know enough. My Tuesday friend told me we both know enough to have *some* kind of a conversation about anything, and she's right. 

There are science lectures I want to attend at Cal. I have wanted to sit in on classes there for a long time. Maybe it’s different from a party that’s social, and I’ll want to bring a wingman, someone to discuss it with afterward or -- and here's my real desire -- I'll meet people there who will want to grab tea afterward and discuss it, our own little study group of lecture-junkies.

I’ve written before about wanting to seek out conversations and friends and classes that will again spark the kind of thinking I miss so terribly; that in the absence of such conversation, I begin to feel stagnant and short of my potential. I know I’ve hemmed and lamented about it before, but maybe, with this one Yes for this weekend, I’m changing the direction of my action. 

Don't Freak Out: A How-To.

When I was sick, I became extremely diligent about my spiritual practice.

Despite, or perhaps including, the conversations I had with a few select friends about the nature, existence, purpose, and questionable benevolence of a Higher Power, I knew that my safest and surest course through all that uncertainty, fear, and buzzing activity around me was to touch base with my center.

It really was only after the first month, though, that I was able to write. I found my first journal entry in a notebook friends had brought me in the hospital just days after I was diagnosed. It begins Saturday, September 29, 2012. There’s one on the 30th, and then it stops. Until after my month of chemo and recovery in the hospital.

But, thereafter, I made it a huge part of my practice to journal, meditate, and eventually write my near-daily blog. I even made the nurse put a sign on my hospital room door that read, “Meditation in progress; Come back in 20 minutes.” (I personally loved that this meant people would continually be turned away without a firm time listed, and I could have some solitude in that busy and anxious place!)

But, I think about this practice now (journal, meditate, blog), one that was common for me before I was sick, one that was essential to me during my treatments, and one that still needs to be a part of my daily life.

Meetings, Movement, and Meditation are my recipe for sanity. And most recently, with all the hubbub, I’m lucky to get even one in there.

But I know very specifically and with assurance that it not only works, it also helps to light my way through.

I am in another place of uncertainty, fear, and buzzing activity. And my only way through is to have the anchors of my practice.

There’s a phrase I’ve heard, “Most days I meditate for thirty minutes, but on really busy days, I meditate for an hour.” Not that I’m doing that! But the intention is there; the intention to give myself even more time and space to coalesce, to touch down, to get grounded, and to listen.

I have less trouble listening as I do heeding. It’s all well and good to listen, and I can do that, and sometimes get answers or guidance; but if I’m not following through or up on the information I receive, what’s the point? Then I simply know what I’m not doing and get to beat myself up for it!

And, I guess that’s not the point either.

I get to remember this morning that I have been in more dire straits than the one I’m currently in: Job ending Friday; uncertain income sources; uncertain path toward fulfillment. I get to remember that I’ve been here before with previous job changes, and I’ve emotionally been here before because of cancer. Nothing puts things in perspective like cancer!

And if I could have gotten through what I did, using the recipe I know works every single time, then I am bidden to use it again. Journal, meditate, blog. Meetings, movement, meditation. Heed the information I’m given.

Rest.

This career shift is all about buying myself time to see myself more clearly, to see my future more clearly, and to create the space and time in which to build toward those goals. This isn’t about busy work, or a brain fogged with anxiety. This isn’t about despair or hopelessness.

This isn’t even about simply “getting through” this time. This time is important; being in this transition space is important. It’s not simply, Batten down the hatches til the storm passes. This isn’t about ostriching my head into the sand. It will be important for me to be aware through all of this time, to listen through it, and to be aware.

To not hide from my own change, because then I won’t know where I’m going or what I’m doing. I have to stay present with this change. I have to acknowledge that I’m uncomfortable, and that I’m taking positive steps. I have to acknowledge where I’m neglecting myself and acting out my anxiety in less than healthy ways. And in order to know any of these things, I have to be present.

And that’s ultimately what each of these “recipes” does for me – they help me get and stay present.

So, yesterday I did cancel that modeling gig. I went to meet up with folks I hadn’t seen in a while. I got my vacuum cleaner fixed, went to the farmer's market, put that bookshelf into my closet. I bought dish soap.

The more I engage in my recipes, the better I feel. The better I feel, the more able I am to take care of myself and to take actions that support me. The more I take action, the better I feel.

It’s a continuous positive feedback loop that has carried me through the most atrocious and trying of circumstances. With grace.  

And if I can remember that -- I am voraciously confident, it can carry me through this. 

B’reishit: In the Beginning…

This week in the Jewish calendar, having unscrolled and read the whole Torah throughout the year, we come again to rewrap it all the way back to the beginning to read the very first word: B’reishit, “In the beginning.”

We’ve come to the end of something, and we wind it back to the beginning to start again.

I can’t think of a more appropriate coincidence and parallel for my own life.

Yesterday afternoon, Addams Family The Musical closed to a full house, once again. We said our final jokes, we emphasized things a little more. We cried at that one “Happy/Sad” song that reminds us that most things in life are a little of both. And when the final bows were over and the final patrons thanked, we came back to the dressing room for the last time, finally and pleasingly and thank god-ingly taking off our sweat-soaked costumes. The last time getting someone to help me un-pin the dress, the last time taking off the long and elaborate and hot wig, the last time returning my mic pack to the sound designer.

And when this was all done, and most of the makeup had been removed from our faces…

We began tearing down the set. The set that only a handful of weeks ago we’d built, and painted, and staged, and seen evolve right before our eyes. The same stage that only a few weeks before that, we’d all stood on for auditions in the remnants of the set from the previous show.

And now, here we were, making this, our set “the remnants of a previous show.”

Because To Kill a Mockingbird opens in 4 weeks.

I asked some of the old-timers if they got a little wistful breaking down something that was like another character in the show, if it was sad to have put it all up, just to take it all down? And each of them said, No. It’s part of the gig. They’re used to it. To the turn-over, to the letting go.

I’m not, yet! It was happy/sad for sure. It will be strange tonight to come to the theater for Mockingbird rehearsal and see the bones of our Addams set on the stage, picked clean of the character we’d built. And yet, if this isn’t a great lesson in the constant ebb and flow, creation and destruction, then I don’t know what is.

In the beginning, we were tentative and perhaps shy, getting used to one another’s personalities, contributions, moods.

In the beginning, we created something out of nothing, out of a few words and notes on a page, sitting in a small room with a piano, laughing a little, tense a little.

In the beginning, we didn’t know about the tech problems or the extra rehearsals. We didn’t know the petty arguments we’d have, or the number of times we’d have to control rolling our eyes.

In the beginning, we didn’t know the kind of joy and laughter we’d create on-stage or back-stage. We didn’t know the relationships we’d form, and the singular role each member of the cast and crew would take. We didn’t know that we’d come to love each other.

And now that we’ve unscrolled to the end, and we’re about to bring it all back to the beginning again, I am sure that we have learned something, something critical to the nature of life and love and joy and experience, that we didn’t know we would and that will carry us forward as we start once more with new words and notes and castmates.

In the beginning, we were strangers. We’ll never be that way again. 

Are you coming?

Yesterday was finally the day. I’ve been with this cast for a month in performance now, and once, even twice, a weekend, they’ve shed their wigs and sweat-soaked costumes and gone out to the bar.

I haven’t been. Partly because I don’t drink, partly because it gets so late, and partly because I’ve just been kinda shy about it. And last night, when the venue was gonna be a gay bar to dance, I decided it was time.

Sure, it’s a Friday night, I’d worked all day, rehearsed and performed all evening, and I had to be up this morning to sit for a portrait artist at 10am. … but you know what? Yesterday was a good day, and I felt invigorated.

I found out that I got cast in another production at the theater where I’m currently running. I got the large important work project done, with a few hiccups at the end of the day. And I finally felt like I beat the solo song that’s been beating me all run.

It was a good day. And dancing sounded perfect. I dance like a white girl, but I have fun doing it. Though, granted, there were other white girls there who definitely don’t fit into that “white girls can’t dance” model! But just the vitality and joy and jumping and ear-wide smile and circle of friends who are together only for a brief period. It was awesome.

I used to go dancing once or twice a month. Then maybe every other month. And now, I’m lucky to go once or twice a year. I would never listen to the music in real life. I know maybe one of the dozen songs that gets played. But it doesn’t matter.

I toss my growing-in hair around, I bounce on the balls of my feet, and I pump my fist in the air when it feels like time.

And it does. 

Blood Brothers

Yesterday morning I had coffee with a cancer friend, for lack of a better term.

He’s someone who reached out to me when I returned to work last Spring, who was 15 years out from his own similar cancer diagnosis, and said if I ever wanted to talk, he was available.

Since then, we’ve had coffee about once every 6 months or so, and we get to talk about walking back into a life that sort of looks the same on the outside, but has completely changed. We exchange the requisite, “Everything’s okay with your health?” question early in the conversation so we can continue on.

We speak mostly about work and fulfillment.

At the time we first met up, he was in a transition of his own, and now, about 18 months later, is again. And so we spoke about meaningfulness, about intention, about the often tipped balance between the checkbook and joy.

I love talking with him. Because he is my cancer friend. Because, it’s different than the first coffee date I had even earlier yesterday morning (a Jewish holiday and therefore a day off work), when I met with the home stager about potentially working and apprenticing with her.

With her, I only said things like, I’m just looking for a change and to instill more creativity into my every day life, to engage more of my heart in my work. With him, the whole conversation is built on the understanding of why that’s so. It’s not just because I’m a flighty 30something; It’s because I’m a fighting 30something (if you will).

I left the first coffee date with the home stager feeling mildly despairing and depressed. And I left the conversation with my cancer friend feeling uplifted, supported, and understood.

I know what he’s talking about when he says how it wrecks him that he has been so wrapped up in work again that he hasn’t had time for his outdoor hobbies. He knows what I’m talking about when I say that we have the privilege and curse of not being able to run on the hamster wheel of life without questioning what we’re doing.

I never wanted a cancer friend. I never wanted to be part of a cancer support group, and tried a few times without going back. Therapy isn’t the same thing either, though that helped. But talking with someone who also had their next breath marched up to the guillotine… it’s different.

It’s not "all cancer all the time." Our conversation wasn’t even about grief or anger. It was barely about cancer at all, except that of course it was. It is the reason we met, became friends, and can share with one another on a different level what our life paths are looking like and what we want them to look like and the struggle between just going along as planned and taking the time to question it all.

I imagine in some ways, it’s like war veterans’ ability to have an instant understanding of one another: You’ve both seen life and death; you’ve both fought bravely and been terrified; you’ve both come back to civilian life and are attempting to make sense of it all, while still paying your cable bill and buying groceries alongside every other citizen.

But you also know that, conscious or not, you both make every decision in reaction to and on top of your experience at war. You can’t not. It’s part of your DNA, now. You’re blood brothers.

I never knew I needed a cancer friend. And I sit here writing with tears of gratitude that I have one. 

Having My Cake and Eating It Too.

(Yes, I’m gonna go there. Bear with me!)

In 12-step recovery it is custom to acknowledge lengths of sobriety or abstinence. Within the first year, we often acknowledge monthly mile-markers, and after a year, we acknowledge annual “birthdays” or “anniversaries.”

Why do this? Why stand up in front of others and say that you’ve accomplished something? Isn't that selfish and self-seeking? Why does it matter?

Well, the conventional wisdom is that it shows others that it’s possible. You’re not actually doing it for yourself, although that’s quite nice; you’re helping others to see that “one day at a time” adds up to months, and even years. You’re offering hope to others.

In our “belly-button birthday” world, why acknowledge our birthdays either? I have friends who eschew celebrating their birthdays. Why celebrate? It’s not like you *did* anything. You just lived another day.

And, just as with recovery, to me, that’s the point these days.

It’s to celebrate and share the fact that you made it. That you are alive. You did do something: You lived.

A former mentor of mine used to call this our “precious human life.” A Buddhist, her meaning is how rare it is to inhabit a human form this lifetime. We could have been a tree or a toad or a fruit fly, alive for 24 hours, unconscious. But we’re not.

We’re animated, active, Fate-affecting. And Fate-affected.

We’re constantly learning and changing and fighting and hoping and loving and hating and struggling and triumphing. We’re constantly forming ideas of who we are and who the world is; where we are and where we want to be.

We’re creating our lives with every breath we have the privilege to draw.

So when a co-worker the other day shushed everyone as we wished her a happy birthday, saying she doesn’t do birthdays, I did whisper to her, But imagine the alternative.

We do fight to be here, conscious or not; every day, we are making a decision to try. No matter what that looks like, even if it looks like stagnation or the mundane. Even if we are the tired, poor huddled masses. We try.

The celebration of a birthday is an acknowledgement of a year of living. A year of something precious and rare and teeming with uncertainty and, hopefully, love.

Today, I turn 33 years old. I have survived alcoholism, dysfunction, gang rape, and cancer.

I have formed and smashed relationships. I have melted and embraced. I have survived my own machinations. And become a metallurgist.

I, my friends, am an alchemist. And I honor us all today by showing you:

We live.

And how!

With love,m.

So, How’s the play?

Oh, you mean that surprise piece of happenstance that's underscored how unhappy I was at work by how happy I am in rehearsal and performance?

That sudden flurry of activity that challenges me to quiet my inner critic and do what I’ve written here I’ve always wanted to do: perform and sing?

This universe of actor grumbling and sweaty mic packs and not enough room at the backstage table and no air conditioning and that railing that was never put in right and voice cracking and line flubbing and lighting failures?

Well, it’s fantastic!!

The buoyant aura of hard work and camaraderie, laughter and support. Even when we’re elbowing for room at the table, or need to ask someone for the hundredth time to hold your wig while you comb the bejeezus out of it – you know you’re doing it in the service of something larger than you.

To be in performance is so much more fueling than in rehearsal – like when they described Sex and the City, they said “the City” was the 5th main character. In a live performance, the audience is also a character, a member of the staged community. “It’s a great audience tonight.” “They’re not really laughing.” “They’re so into it.” You measure your performance not necessarily by how much they laugh or applaud, but by what they give you and what you give them back. And sometimes what you get is bolstering, and sometimes it's not, but it's always present. Creating something that never was and will never be again.

Flubbed it tonight? Live theater! Try it again tomorrow. Got your ridiculously long wig stuck on a screw during an entrance? Have your co-actor unhook you and get on with it. Didn’t get a laugh on that line tonight? Do it again tomorrow anyway, because you think it’s funny. Try it differently. “Let’s get crazy,” to quote a line from the show.

In addition to all this, I’ve loved the backstage buzz. People are talking about auditions and other musicals, and arguing about their favorite. People are going over their next audition monologues and kibitzing about where they’ll audition next and who the casting director is and if you saw that one last play, and Boy Howdy what a success/disaster.

It’s thrilling to me! Someone so new to this world, it’s like drinking from an oasis. People are actually talking about theater, about acting, about what they’ll do next. And it’s inspiring me to continue trying.

I know it would be very easy for me to not do anything for a while, because of my upcoming job transition. But, this play is part of the reason why I’m changing career avenues. And much of the point of the changing avenue is to change my schedule to accommodate being in productions.

Hearing all the dressing room chatter about upcoming auditions, I find I want to do more. And, like I wrote yesterday, it could be easy for me to let this thread drop when it’s over – I know how to have a flurry of activity followed by inaction. But being in the belly of the action, hearing words fly back and forth and the encouragement and the excitement shared by the other actors… I’m demanding from myself that I make these outreach emails and audition calls now, before the play is through.

So, how’s the play? It’s changed and is changing my life.

It’s hard, and I feel inadequate, and I judge myself against more experienced singers. I dread these two lyrics in the whole show and challenge myself to not dread them, to be present and let it be what it’ll be because it’s not the all of who I am or what I’m giving.

The show is fun and takes effort and requires me to be present and accommodating and kind.

In short, the show requires me to live. And live bravely. Amen. 

Yes, We Can.

• emailed landlord to ask to use 4th floor abandoned room as art room
• emailed vocal coach to inquire about lounge singing, how to start
• emailed friend to ask about going up in a small engine plane again. (flew one myself this year, and as always predicted, loved it. eventual vision of napa valley tour pilot.)
• have interview on monday for two teaching positions with a jewish organization
• have interview set up for another teaching gig
• have modeling/portraiture session set for next weekend
• replied yes to get minimum wage to usher at a Cake concert in two weeks
• will be reading tarot cards at good friend’s Halloween party on donation basis
• called friend's mom who’s a professional home stager about being her assistant
• have coffee info interviews set up with a few high-ballers in the community
• have action items from previous info interviews to follow up on
• emailed work-out studio to inquire about becoming an instructor and was told it's possible (with a lot of work)
• have a solid lead on fine dining waitress work if comes to that
• registered as a model with a “real person” modeling agency
• updated my profile on modelmayhem website
• got exact amount of pto i’ll be paid out when I leave my job at end of month
• inquired about health insurance exchange
• got flu shot and all blood tests up to date (all negative – which is positive!)
• made appointment for teeth cleaning
• ordered new shipment of contact lenses before these fall apart in my eyeballs
• replied to private tutoring gig from tutoring website I’m registered with (which… i’d completely forgotten about until I started getting these emails two weeks ago… coincidence?)
• emailed yesterday’s blog about t’shuvah to a jewish publication (a little late, obviously, but still.)

...to name a few of the actions I’ve taken in support of my work transition!

I am nervous about leaving the safety of my 40houraweekdeskjob. Yes.

But, I am taking a lot of action. Even as I drag my feet in some places, and have certainly been watching more Netflix than is good for any one person.

But I have a phone call with a mentor today and we’ll talk about smallness and scarcity and healing and changing. We’ll talk about, “Do not go back to sleep.” We’ll talk about the beguiling and insincere safety of being quiet and small. We’ll talk about the pain and bravery of stepping out of the cage and the tenacity and audacity it takes to stay out of it.

It’s not that I haven’t taken or thought to take any of the above actions before. It’s not my first time at this rodeo. But I just feel different. To quote Elisabeth Gilbert quoting a Balinese healer: “Even in my underpants, I feel different.”

But I also know my habit and pattern of swift work followed by years of inaction. I know what it’s like for me to engage in a flurry of activity and then allow it to languish by my lack of follow-up. I know what it’s like to abandon myself.

Which is why I’m telling everyone and their mother (literally) about my impending transition.

I cannot do this alone. I am a creature of habit, and I need you to be like my wagon train – I need you to lead me away from the ruts. If I let you know I’m on this path, you can help me stay on it. If I let you know it’s terribly painful for me to work toward something new, you can hold my hand and tell me you believe in me.

I know the source of all this change must come from within – I know it’s up to my own inner work to be the foundation for a new life. But I also believe in you, who believes in me, and we cycle one another into our best selves and our best lives.

Yes, I am the one who needs to actually look up that professional development course. And I’m the one who needs to continue looking at alternative work websites – and actually reply – but without you to cheer me on, without you to help me hold the lantern of faith, this change wouldn’t work.

That’s what feels so different this time – I feel supported internally and externally in a way these transitions have never felt. I feel optimistic and hopeful, giddy and aware.

Yes, the future is uncertain. But one action at a time, with your help and your heart, I am clarifying the vision of a future (and present) me who is freer than I’ve ever allowed myself to be. 

Undocking is not the same as Unmoored.

A friend of mine was a CPA working in the corporate world. She was making good money and working long hours. And was not happy.

She gave up her apartment, put her purged belongings in storage, and moved to India for 6 months, studying at an ashram, with no need for income or work, except inner work.

Then she came back to the States.

You can’t pay your bills with enlightenment.

She found that she had to create a middle-ground, and now, 10 years later, runs a private practice counseling others toward their own financial/spiritual balance.

I have a feeling I’m about to embark on a similar journey of finding my middle-ground between financial independence and creative expression.

Well, I guess I can’t really say embark, when what I mean is “continue” to simply push the boat out of the harbor. A boat isn’t meant to stay moored, and you’ll never find out what its strengths or weaknesses are, or what your skills as a sailor are if you don’t leave the safety of the dock.

To be concrete: I have informed my job that October 31 will be my last day there.

And the options that I have before me are less than concrete!

I’ve known for a while that it’s time to move on. In support of that notion, earlier this year, I not only put in for my own promotion at my job, but when I was told, “No resources for that,” I went on an active job search, engaging the help of friends to revamp my resume, made networking dates, and went on many interviews.

I was even offered a few jobs. Jobs, that perhaps before, I would have taken.

But the jobs offered, I came to realize continued marching me up a ladder and on a path that didn’t feel like where I wanted to go.

Despite my “big realization” many months ago about wanting to move in the direction of an executive director or program director position… I began to find out more about what that kind of job and life would mean. And it would mean more hours of my life than I want a job to be.

I found, through that job search, that I don’t want a bigger title with a mildly bigger salary. That the trajectory on which I am positioned and was looking to be headed was not one that ended in work-life balance. In a non-profit, there is rarely such a thing!

So, in came the notion of the “fulcrum,” endeavoring toward a job or jobs that generated more income with fewer hours. Leaving me the time I need to create.

When was the last time I picked up a paint brush, or even a pencil? Have I worked on that essay my aunt suggested I submit to publications? When was the last time I could really call myself a poet, despite my Master's degree in it?

Time. I discovered I wanted to literally buy myself time.

And so, I began to vaguely think about career paths or jobs that would be in that direction. Then came the High Holidays at work… and the play… and a halt to any developmental thinking.

But, the holidays are nearly over. It was finalized that there can’t be a different place for me where I’m at, and after too many days crying at or after or on the way to work, I am making a leap … not of faith, but of action.

With the faith that my action will lead me to something different.

For the past 16 years, since I was 16 years old, I’ve been a secretary. I’ve adjusted more margins and input more data than there are guidos in Jersey.

And so I am doing what conventional wisdom says never to ever do. I am quitting without a job lined up.

I have had a professional-direction conversation nearly every day since my decision, am having and have had coffee with people to bounce ideas off of and to network with. I have closed the browser window when I find myself looking again at jobs that say “Administrative” anywhere in the title.

I have been in a rut, and the only way to un-rut yourself is to lean into the discomfort and the growing edge of change. To watch when I’m teetering into despair, into habitual job search words, … into a Netflix binge, and to push myself onto the high ground again.

Another email, a sudden “crazy” idea, a phone call for some more information.

The experience I find most different about this job search than all my previous “quit with no plan” moves, is that I feel supported by my current office and all the people I’ve met there. This doesn’t feel impulsive, even though there’s “no plan;” everyone at my work supports my move, and though they’re sad to see me go, they have every faith in me that I can do whatever it is that feeds me.

I am reaching out to so many people I’ve met there. This isn’t a “here’s my two-weeks’ notice” email, as I’ve done a dozen times prior. This is actually slow and supported in many ways, and I feel it that way.

I am nervous, of course, but I am excited. I feel glad to notice that my brain is coming up with ideas that might be viable that would have been totally out of the box, and therefore dismissed, before. I’m not looking for another 40 hour a week desk job. I am finally willing to look at a patchwork living.

This is my own “move to India” move, though maybe it’s closer to the center of rational than I know. I’ve never been willing to have a few jobs and put them together for a living, because I thought it was too hard, or too undisciplined, or too “artist.”

I’ve been afraid of judgment: my own, my family’s, my peers'. I’ve been afraid to try to cobble together a living, because that “sounds” so hard.

But for 16 years, I’ve worked the 40 hour job. I’ve had the regular pay-stub with the paid-time off and the health insurance. I’ve had the computer log-in and the number to the copy machine guy memorized.

I’ve done “normal.”

But, dears, I’ve never exactly been normal.

Here’s to Voltaire’s Candide-cum-internet meme:

"If we do not find something pleasant, at least we will find something new.”

The Bomb Squad.

Paying rent is a choice, she told me.

Um, What?

Sure. You can choose to pay your rent or not. If you choose not to pay rent, you face those results. If you choose to pay, that has different results. But it’s still a choice; you do have power here: where would you rather spend your money?

I was about 2 years into actively looking at my numbers and money, and back at the beginning of some work around my relationship to money, being broke, struggling, restrict & binging (aka depriving & then overspending).

The pattern that I would fall into was like clock-work. Every year and a half into a job that I didn’t enjoy, I would begin to feel frantic. Trapped. Manic. Suicidal. How can I make it stop?, I’d wail.

With no tools or guide, I would do what I thought made sense: Quit the job.

With no tools or guide, that didn’t really accomplish much. Except send me back into a different kind of mania and frenzy – now I had nothing, no savings, no job, and no plan. Three times in the last 8 years, I ended up with less than $5.00 in my bank account.

Each time, “miraculously,” I would land another job just in the nick of time. But it would be one job same as the other job same as the other job.

I had no idea how to break this cycle. I thought I was being diligent. I would reach out to people before I would quit. I would do informational interviews, and send out tentative resumes. I would look on craigslist for “creative” jobs, but would somehow end up at an ad posted by a foot fetishist…

Anything. Anything to not sit in front of a computer all day, I thought. – Well, almost anything.

And so about 3 years ago, in despair, I went near bawling to a meeting of folks who are trying to claw their way out of the pit of debt, financial worry, self-abandonment. Because, in the end, I've learned, it’s a function of self-worth.

So, I began working with a new mentor about a year ago. She had hopes for me I couldn’t imagine at all. Buying a car to get me to auditions and band practice, being a big one. Not me. Not people like me. I’m a fuck-up. I ruin things. I’m broke. Hello?!

But, she held out hope for an idea I could never have conceived of. And 6 months later, I put a down payment on a car.

A car that takes me to auditions and band practice.

However, it’s not the rosy scene it seems.

About two months ago or so, the itch arose again, the heat turned up. I gotta get outta this job. I’m dying here! GET ME THE FUCK OUT OF HERE!

And along with that struggle and pain and fury and anguish again arose the suicidal ideation, because how else can I get out of this pattern. I am doing all this work, I have a car now, I’m doing shit, but I HATE MY JOB. I will never end this cycle, and I can’t quit again.

I can’t quit again.

I can’t quit again.

Quitting, for me, is equivalent to relapse. It’s insane to think it would be different this time. It’s insane to throw myself back into the cycle. IT’S NOT THE SAME. IT CAN’T BE THE SAME. I don’t have to be the same…

And that’s where the change happened.

I reached out every single fucking day during that period, texting and calling friends in TEARS, unable to see out of this hole. Telling them, please please PLEASE help me not to quit today. That I see the insanity of this. That I can’t go down that path again. That I don’t want to detonate my life again.

I don’t want to detonate my life again.

I like stability. I like the freedom of knowing how I’m going to fill my fridge and my gas tank. That doesn’t mean that I have to do the kind of work I’m doing for the rest of my life, but for right now! for this minute!, it does.

And please dear god, help me not nuke my life again.

And, you know – I didn’t. 

Because I didn’t, because I sat through some of the most uncomfortable feelings I’ve ever had, through that pain and frustration and ire and hopelessness and despair, because others told me that it would pass, because they told me to read the chapter on Withdrawal, because they told me they believed that I could find another way if I just held tight…. I got the chance to drive a car with a tank of gas and belly full of food to an audition and land a role. I got to show up for the things that give me zest and zeal and love and joy.

I get to do that today, because I sat through some of the worst anguish I know. And I came to the other side of it.

This does not mean that I love my job. It doesn’t mean I don’t want to do different work. It doesn’t mean I enjoy my job any more than I did. But it means that it’s not my whole world. And by allowing myself to sit still, I am available for the other things that feed me. Like groceries.

I have never come to this side of that struggle before, so I don’t really know what will come on the other side. Except, today, play with my band, tomorrow theater rehearsal, and Monday, a photo shoot.

If I had quit, I couldn’t show up, because I’d be in despair of not having any money and a frenzy of trying to find work. I don’t like that I have to show up and adjust margins for a goddamn living.

But by not nuking my life, I get to have a life.