Getting the F*ck off my Knees.

On Friday night at 10 minutes to midnight sitting in my parked car outside my apartment building, I was scrolling through Facebook on my phone.  I usually do this as a 'before getting out of my car at the end of the night' ritual.  I don’t know why.  Like I’m getting a few minutes' alone time before I go into the house… but I live alone... with a cat. … so…  In any case, I came across a post about that evening's blue moon, looked quickly at the clock and exclaimed, “Shit!”

I shut off my phone, dashed out of the car up to my apartment.  I took off my heels, slipped on flats, grabbed my loaner tambourine and climbed excitedly and nervously up the stairs to the rooftop of my building.

Pushing open the door, I saw before me a whitewashed roof with long pipes and what look like abandoned solar panels.  Dropping my keys by the door, I carried my tambourine to the center of the rooftop, shielding myself slightly from the view of neighboring buildings, and turned around to see the full, audacious moon before me.  Then, I began to jangle the tambourine, and finally I began to sing.

...uh, what?

As I’ve come to the part of my recovery/internal work where we are instructed to “Humbly ask God to remove our shortcomings,” my mentor asked me how I’d done this step in the past.  I told her I usually get on my knees and say some kind of prayer. 

“Get the fuck off your knees!” she replied emphatically.

You see, I have a habit of being small.  Of minimizing myself, diminishing myself, down-playing and ignoring my own needs out of fear and, mostly now, out of long-grooved practice.  This habit of deprivation and hiding causes many problems in my life, mostly because I am surely aware that I am not “meant” to be a mouse. 

Being a mouse, though, often looks like me withholding my truths, not admitting what I really want from others and from myself and from life.  Things like. … I want to get married.  *gasp!*  It was near torture to say this aloud to her when we were discussing truths I never tell anyone.  It feels embarrassing to say it.  To feel it.  To want it.  “I'm a modern woman, proud brave able!  What a simpering, waif-like desire to have!,” goes my internal monologue.  And I wither to admit it to anyone else.

My mentor and I spoke at length that day, and she finally suggest-/insist-ed that I get a tambourine, dress up in something exciting and shout this truth, and all my others, to the heavens.

*Gulp*

So on Friday morning, two weeks after this suggestion, I finally obtained a borrowed tambourine (you’d be surprised how few there are around!).  I texted my mentor that tonight was the night!  And then I read online that it was also going to be a full moon, a blue moon in fact.  This seemed most auspicious.  (For a woo-woo hippie shit chick like myself!)

The evening found me on the roof of my apartment building, fresh from a salsa lesson/live music dance in the city, in a hot dress and pulsing with feminine wiles, furtively tapping this noisemaker in my hand, trying not to feel embarrassed.  

And then I began to sing.  I started softly and whirled myself into a crescendo, abandoning decorum, delighting in the jangle and thrill of the truth.  Gyrating, gesticulating, twirling around the rooftop, I sang loudly all the secret desires of my soul and my heart, echoing a refrain of, “I let go of being small!” and hammering wildly on the tambourine, an elegant, alight grin streaked across my face as I hopped lightly over the pipes, spinning around the roof until all my heart’s desires, all my tiny wishes I’m too ashamed to speak, had poured out of my throat and into the moonlit darkness.

Laughing, giddy, adrenalized, I headed back to the entrance door, calling brazenly to the bulbous moon: “Peace out, Blue Moon.”

Float like a Waterbug, Sting like a Bee

It isn’t so much that I’m afraid of heights as it is I’m afraid of falling from heights.  Therefore, when, 2 months ago, I found myself in Moab, Colorado dangling on the side of sheer rock face struggling to find a toe-hold in the millimeter-wide crannies, I began to panic. 

Now, to pull back the scene a little bit, I was about 15 feet off the ground, strapped into a harness, and attached to a grounding line held by my belay partner only a few feet below.  But it didn’t feel safe.  It felt like I was stabbing the rock cliff with my feet, trying desperately to find purchase in thin air, my adrenaline kicking up so high I could taste it.

Muscle-fatigued and terrified, I called to my partner below that I wanted to come down – I was done.  The rock climbing guide on our trip overheard my plea and walked over from the lines and climbers parallel to me.  He suggested that I sit back in the harness, take a break, feel my weight being held, and catch my breath.  Then he called up, “You can come down, but if you want to keep going, I’ll help you.” 

Later that evening, back on flat earth in front of a crackling fire, he chuckled he could see my shoulders slump at that moment, a moment of resignation, a knowing that, indeed, because of his help, I was going to and was able to keep going.  This sanguine moment of, “Shit, alright, fine.  Let’s do this.”  And, together, we did.  He called out places where I could find my footing, and shortly thereafter I was at the top, my heart a fluttering canary, stress-tears straining back in my eyes, weak from fear and exertion – and once safely back the 60ft to the ground again, proud.

He told me of a concept called a “retro-climb.”  It is only after you have accomplished this ridiculous feat of effort that you feel pride, accomplished, and glad you did it at all.  In the moment, you only feel fear, anxiety, terror.  Honestly, I’ve not felt so frightened in recent memory, despite the intellectual knowledge that I was completely safe, held, and cared for.  (My naturopath had a field day turning down my maxed-out adrenaline once I’d returned to SF!)

In my own personal work lately, my mentor suggested I seek an internal guide to show me my blind spots.  As some of you know, I sometimes use a Shamanic Journey meditation practice that introduces you to internal guides of both human and animal form.

And so, the other morning in meditation, I “went in” to find a guide to show me what I’m missing, since there are whole areas of my life that still feel unresolved and cause me distress (see: "romance and finance"; aka serially single and perpetually under/un-employed).  In this meditation, as the title of this blog may suggest, I came across a waterbug.

… Now, the waterbug does not seem like the fancy-dancy spirit animal one would hope for!  It’s not a lion or eagle or even antelope.  And yet, here it was.  I won’t “bore” you with the details of the meditation, but the lesson was clear: 

The waterbug floats on the top of the water, not because it is defying the law of physics, but precisely because it knows, believes, and trusts in them so completely that it knows it will be held on the surface.  It is not defying gravity, it is embracing the truest knowledge that because of the laws of nature, it must and will always be held.

The rock climbing guide and I had a long conversation one evening about spirituality, and he revealed that his largest question for “God” or the Universe as he continued to expand his life and open his vulnerable self and admit all parts of him was, “Can you really love me that much?”

I replied to him that my question is, “Can you really hold me that much?”  Can you really let me know, help me feel, to my core, that I am held?  That I am safe? 

The waterbug teaches me that it floats because it doesn’t tense and struggle.  It floats because it relaxes and trusts, and simply embodies a knowing that if it steps onto the clear surface of a pond, it will be held.  And furthermore, having seen that it has been held and carried before, it doesn’t continue to question whether it will be held again in the future! 

So this is my lesson for the moment: to embody the true knowing that, like sitting back into a climbing harness, I am expertly and even lovingly held.  And, should I ever choose to question (as it can become a choice rather than a habit), there will always be help offered me.

And p.s., if I mess up and tense up and fall through the surface of the water… I can swim.

The Facts of Life

Not like “the birds and the bees”; like the theme song: “You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and there you have…”

In this great rumpus race for which we have signed up by the very nature of being born, we are subject to a variety of experience.  Some of these we deem good, some bad, and being pleasure-seeking beings, we are partial to those we deem good.

In my own personal relationship to the universe, life, fate and its many faces/facets, I have oriented my understanding to be one that says, Everything happens for our own good.  Even the bad things.

For my alcoholism, I have found recovery, a community, and way of life that brings me fellowship, understanding, pleasure, laughter, and a sense of being deeply understood.

For my childhood, I have come to tell myself that because of my experiences, I've become sensitive, compassionate, empathetic, resourceful, strong, and creative.

For my cancer, I have taken my struggle and survival as impetus to engage in my life more fully, playing in a band, flying a plane, acting and singing in theater.

For all these horrors and more, I can look back and deem them “good,” because they have led me to becoming more useful and engaged as a human.

And yet.

Fuck. All. That.

That we are thrown against the shores of life brutally onto the rocks of experience, shaping us, reshaping us, and winnowing us down to the raw beauty of ourselves—  Hey Universe, would you lay off a minute, huh?

Because perhaps, Shit. Just. Happens.

And that is the worst understanding of all for me.  It is the least controlled, the least controllable, the most chaotic, disordered, entropy-laden reasoning for it all.

What it means is that we are not “safe.”  And if there is anything I have struggled for in my lifetime, it is to feel safe.

But in this quest, this blazing, self-propelled quest for safety, I have built up around myself an armor, a buffer, a multi-layered sequence of dance steps that I believe if I dodge left, you, it, experience, failure, hurt, calamity will needly dodge right.

Yet, the Universe has its own dancesteps, and sometimes they are to bowl you over like a rhino in a football helmet.

Furthermore, by dodging experience as a whole --monstrous as I believe or fear it to be-- I also dodge whatever good that rhinoceros might be trying to hand me.  And therein lies the rub, eh?

As I mentioned a few days ago about the dam, restricting my own self, need, and experience out of fear of what might happen if I let things flow, I am scrubbing up against my own realization that I am restricting myself for fear that bad shit might happen.  I am hoping to control the all of my experience so I am not harmed anymore.

Because forget all the above bullshit (which I also happen to believe) about all those bad things becoming or being seen as good things – don’t fucking think that I want or wanted them too.  They were all still egregiously painful.  And, as I mentioned, human as I am, I don’t want pain.

In my attempt to restrict my experience of pain, however, I believe I restrict my experience of benevolence.  Grace.  Fulfillment.

And so, I am stymied, victim of my own prison, of my own design to be safe, I am restricted from the greater joys and rewards of life.

“You take the good, you take the bad… “

Am I willing to expose myself, to be vulnerable and open to the whole of life’s experience, knowing that in my disarmoring, I am (also) opening myself to unforeseen goodness?

“Then that happened…”

This is what I said to my friend after I broke down on Friday night with the truth of how lost I’d been feeling. 

She said to me, You can’t do that. You can’t say something like what you shared, and then cover it up with a joke like it wasn’t important or true. 

And that’s what I want to do with today’s blog. I want to try to stem some of whatever reactions I believe you might have had to yesterday’s blog of anger and fear and isolation. Because no matter how I feel in a moment, I do need you greatly, and I want you to still like me and not to think that I’m a whiny, privileged person who’s lost perspective on the world. 

So, I’m going to try not to do that, to reverse any effects of what I said yesterday. And simply let it lie. 

I do know that my job is not scooping animal carcasses off the highway, or cleaning toilets, or any other job that many people have. I have friends who've lost children, husbands, gone bankrupt. I mean, I work at a high-end retailer in Union Square, not on a chain gang. And I'm going through cancer survivorship stuff, like I imagine and hope those of us who have to, do. 

I know, too, that in times like these, we all seem to lose some perspective, and I allow myself to have that for now, because I do know it will change. 

But, I guess I did need (or want) to put how I've been feeling out there, even in this impersonal forum, because it is the truth, and that’s what I tell here — with or without back-peddling. 

So, whatever reactions you might have had (because I can see from the stats page that many people did read that blog), I hope … well, I hope it’s okay I put the truth there. And I'm trying to let myself be okay with it, too.

"You can't save your face and your ass at the same time."

oh, that again.

So, I’ve restarted my work on relationships with a new mentor, someone who shares the lineage of the woman I’d been working with, which means that this morning, I got to read aloud my entire sad history of relationships and sex. Again.

Good. Times. 

Interestingly enough, though, I was struck this morning about how my avoidance of or aversion to commitment in relationships parallels my aversion to commitment in my career and work-life. 

I’ve said and heard it a thousand times: Romance and Finance are two sides of the same coin. And I knew that working on one would bring about change or awareness in the other. 

But, somehow rereading my pattern — of splitting when things get weird, or choosing partners I don’t want, or not being open to those men who are into me — highlighted what is happening for me in career-land. 

A friend said to me last week that it sounds like it’s time for me to choose a career path. Not a job. But something I can follow through on. 

Eek. I hate that. I’ve always hated the idea of having to choose one thing. But I recounted this all to my mom and told her that it’s similar to how I had to choose theater over music. I miss music. And it’s not like I’ll never play again, but I had to choose to put my creative efforts into theater if I wanted to get anywhere with it. 

I hated that. I hate that I can do and be so many things, and I have “so much potential,” and so many varied interests, that choosing one is incredibly frightening for me. Like I’ll choose poorly, to quote Indiana Jones. What if by choosing theater, I’m turning my back on a fate in music or painting? What about all the other roads my life could take?

And yet. By not choosing one, I take no roads, or follow a little of each, and I feel stymied and frozen. 

Commitment leads to freedom in that way. 

And when it’s going to come to career, I’m going to have to choose. Sure, I could easily and very successfully be: A teacher, a writer, a psychologist, a mediator, a community engagement executive. 

I could be any of these things. Hell, I could even be a doctor or a lawyer or a spaceman if I wanted. 

Well, maybe not a spaceman. 

But I haven’t wanted to choose. Because what.if.I’m.wrong. 

What if I choose something and it doesn’t turn out well? What if I fail at finding "my calling" this lifetime? What if NONE of those things listed above actually make me want to get up and go to work?

What if I put my trust and faith in the wrong career, or -- to parallel -- in the wrong man?

Well, sorry, lady, you gotta eat. 

And you gotta choose. 

Sure, people change careers throughout their lives, but I’ve changed mine so many times before age 30 that I think I’ve played that card out. 

Therefore. One of these things is going to have to be it. Whether it makes my heart sing or not. No, I didn’t want to “give up” music. But I did, and the theater thing I love, even if it’s slowed down for now. 

None of the above professions makes my heart sing, per se. There’s no glow surrounding any of them saying, Pick me Pick me. But each inspires me to help bring others together, to inspire others to heal, to bring unity into the world. 

So, no. I don’t know, still, what I want to be when I grow up. But I am warming up to the idea of choosing one path. And actually moving forward on it. 

Rock Saves.

As you may have noticed by now, I’ve been in a bit of a maudlin mood since attaining a job in retail. Since that time, in the last week alone, my sponsor had to let me go in order to focus on her own healing work, I got a traffic ticket while on my way to visit a pregnant friend, and my four stalwart neighboring trees were torn down. 

Plus, I slammed my pinkie in a drawer. 

It’s been a No good very bad day, and you can call me Alexander. 

It’s been pretty bad, and even before the tree massacre, I was on the phone with a friend saying that it felt like a series of trap doors: just when you think it can’t get worse, it does. I wouldn't be surprised for “The Big One” to hit, or my car to break down. 

That said, yesterday, in a funk over the trees (read: hysterically crying over the loss of everything solid in my life — yes, perspective is a lost art), I drove my car in to work instead of taking public transportation. On came the NPR, because it’s what I usually listen to in the car. 

But it wasn’t right. Sure, it’s informative and I enjoy it in a way, but it’s not fun. It’s not uplifting. Unless it’s A Prarie Home Companion. 

And so I put on a CD of one of my favorite bands, playing one of their most famous live sets. 

I immediately pressed through to one of my favorite songs, one I can count on as an uplifter, and as the song progressed, I turned the volume louder. And louder. 

As I sat in that toll bridge traffic, I began to sing along. I began to smile. 

I played a series of 4 songs, the last one on repeat as I climbed the circular parking garage. And I felt better. 

I have this kind of amnesia when it comes to music: I forget that Rock Saves. 

I can go for weeks without music, maybe a few songs on the radio here and there, but not volume up to 40, ear-ringing, loud singing, smile-inducing music. 

I felt transformed by the end of my trip from Oakland to San Francisco. If there were another trap door opening beneath me, I felt as though the music was giving me upper body strength to cling to the sides of the trap, and hoist myself out. 

The trap may be open beneath me, and it is always an option to fall in, but somehow I felt like I was climbing out of that one. That, for that morning, that previously sob-fest morning, I was not going to continue on like that. 

I parked my car and walked toward my job with an actual jaunt in my step, and a bit of that subversive, “I’ve been listening to music really loud,” half-grin on my face. A cute 20-something said hi to me as I jaunted down the sidewalk. 

I’ve been walking to work looking solely down at the sidewalk, internally commenting the awful smell of human waste. 

Yesterday was a different morning. 

Sometimes I feel like I could be diagnosed with manic-depression, the way I can swing from despair to hope! But, perhaps it’s normal. And I’ll never really know, honestly. 

When things are going well enough, I never feel the need for anti-depressants, and even when they’re not going well, it’s always temporary, and not debilitating. 

So, maybe, simply, Rock Saves. 

Maybe, simply, I have a fount of resiliency that I only seem to find in desolate moments. 

Yesterday, as I drove to work, I drove through a portal of grace. 

Things are not different. All the externals remain the same. 

But I have that grin on my face. And I’ve been singing in my car. 

Without Defense

In the summer, I’d texted friends nearly daily, asking them to help me not quit my desk job. I wrote to them that quitting my job without a plan would be just like an alcoholic taking a drink: Disastrous. Painful. An uncharted trip through hell. 

But. I wasn’t connected to the things I knew to do. Few meetings, no sponsor, stuck in the middle of step work I’d started months before. 

And so, I drank. Metaphorically. 

In the fall, I quit my job, without a plan. I felt elated, relieved, free. Exactly like taking a drink. 

And now, I am living the consequences of that decision. 

Yesterday, as I walked back to my apartment after more than 8 hours on my feet and little to show for it, I catalogued all the things I missed about my old job. 

The short commute, with no bridges or tunnels involved. The normal hours. The flexible hours, when I could take off to go to Trader Joes at lunch, or walk around the gorgeous suburban landscape, or nap at a nearby friend's before rehearsal. The co-workers I could have conversations with about things that were intelligent or fun or informative.

The kids. The chickens. The pianos.

The sitting. 

For all I wailed about wanting a job that didn’t require me to sit in front of a computer for 40 hours a week (and granted I still don’t) the ability to actually sit at all during the day sounds vastly luxurious. 

And as I walked home, the catalogue ever increasing, I said aloud, “I made a mistake.”

It was a mistake to quit my job the way I had, without a plan. I knew and had catalogued all the ephemeral perks of that job countless times, knowing what a cush place it was. But I was antsy, restless, hopeless and defiant. And I made a decision to leave. 

Now, in the school of life that I’ve come through, I hear much about “not regretting the past,” and true, through the interim period without work, I befriended another unemployed bright person who suggested a crowd funding campaign to pay off my back-rent cancer debt. The campaign was wildly successful, and a check is in the mail this week. In addition, because the goal was quickly reached, a very generous family gave me a donation insisting I spend it on “something fun,” which is how and why I have this fancy new laptop to replace the dinosaur I’d had. 

But… other than that? I mean, couldn’t those goals have been accomplished anyway? A campaign have been suggested another time? 

Look, I know this retail job I’m in now is temporary. I am trying my best to stave off the Stockholm Syndrome that seems to have engulfed everyone who works there, or anywhere in retail, into thinking that the paltry, hiccuping pay-scale, weak health insurance, and unpredictable schedule is acceptable. 

Today, I am trying to forgive the faulty thinking of mine that sent me on this fool’s errand in the first place, comparing it to how I did behave when I was drinking: It’s not cuz I was an awful person that I did what I did, it was because I didn’t know any better, and I didn’t have any tools to combat my insane thinking. 

I have to offer myself compassion for the misguided, instant-gratification seeking decision I made. I was not using the tools I knew to use. I was disconnected from the community that helps me not make insane decisions, financial and otherwise. 

I do feel, however, that admitting that I made a mistake in quitting that job without a plan is a good first step for me. I am not immune to my own thoughts. I am not solved from throwing myself into the abyss because I think my house is on fire. 

I have decades'-driven ruts and habits that I fell over into. And I did not have the diligence or connection to haul me out before I burned my life down instead. 

That’s okay. 

I mean, it has to be. Right? 

Numbers, Indignation, Holding Patterns: i.e. the Usual.

I have the delightful learned ability to read a health insurance coverage summary with a hawk’s eye. 

Post-cancer, I have become acutely aware of watch-words like “after deductible,” “co-insurance,” and particularly, “lab fees.”

Last week, I met with two of the 3 HR ladies I have worked with at the retail company I now work for. The first, Heidi, I met on the day I waltzed into the HR department with no plan and asked if they were hiring. I then had a wonderful impromptu interview and was subsequently hired. She’s great, personable, real. And someone with whom I can be honest. 

To finish up the health insurance thought, I met with another of the HR ladies last week to sign the “permanent hire” paperwork, and to get the particular HR documents I’ll need, and information on eventual benefits. 

I’d assumed, working for a large conglomerate corporation, that my health benefit coverage would be fantastic. More people = less $ from me, right? Wrong. 

This morning, I logged in to see what my options are, as I have to stay with the Kaiser health insurance, since that’s where all my cancer records and doctors are, plus it’s in walking distance of my house. 

I looked at the plan they offered. I saw many watch-words, including all those above. And then I brought out the plan that I’m currently under via COBRA through my old synagogue employer. 

My lord. What a better plan. 

As someone who needs to get lab tests done fairly regularly, I know that I now pay $10 for them to look and see if my blood is still blood, or if some of it has reverted to cancer. 

With the new plan I saw this morning, I’d have to meet a $4,000 deductible… and then I’ll still pay a 20% copay. Besides the hundred or so they’ll take out of my paycheck each month, just to have the plan. 

Now, this may all be boring to you. But, number-cruncher that I now am, COBRA costs me $400 a month = $4800 a year. 

So they’re kinda similar, now, ain’t they? 

How much is a lab test before deductible? I don’t know. A hundred, maybe? How ‘bout the other things I get checked through-out the year that the new plan says, “After deductible” next to. 

Knowing that the plan I currently have is a phenomenal one (having done the health exchange comparison, too), I asked the HR woman last week if they could do something about my pay if I keep my own health insurance. 

She’d never heard of such a thing. ??! 

It is common that if someone is covered by outside insurance, if the company is not paying for it, the employee can get a boost in salary, since the company would be paying insurance, but now can pay the employee instead. 

Again, she’d never heard of such a thing. And said, no, that would not be the case here. 

Enter the second HR conversation I had last week. It was post-holidays, post-working on New Year’s Day, and I was exhausted, upset, not happy. 

This retail, commission, fighting for customers with the other girls on the sales floor thing is not for me. 

I walked upstairs to see Heidi. I told her as much, in quite cushioned, complimentary, grateful words. 

And she said: I figured that wouldn’t be for you. 

But, we love you, you’re one of 2 of 70 employees kept on past the seasonal period. “Give me a week,” she said. 

Give me a week to think of another role for you here. We want to keep you, and let me think about where we can utilize you. I have some ideas already, but I have to check them out.

She knows me, sort of. She got one of those hand-made collage holiday cards. I’d gone in to talk to her previously about expectations for the sales positions, and how much hustle one has to do in that role in order to make a living. A living which would equal the paycheck I left at my non-profit desk job. 

She said last week that she could see I was someone who thought about the good of the whole, that one’s success is all’s success, and that cut-throat retail floors don’t allow for that. 

I later said to a friend, it’s like she called me a communist! But, funnily and astute observed, she’s right. For the good of all! And other Marxist ideologies!

It’s coming to the end of the week she’d asked me for. She was nearly plaintive in her asking me to give her the time to think of something.  — They really like me. 

In addition, I wrote her an email early this week saying that she needed to have all the information: I do theater. And that means nights and weekends. And if we can keep that in mind as we seek out a new role for me there, that’d be great. 

We’ll see what she comes up with. If anything. 

If I land back in front of a desk so I can get to theater rehearsals, so be it. As long as I’m earning more than I was at the non-profit. 

I mean, come on people. You’re an international corporation. I’m not 23 anymore. I have skills. 

Again, we’ll see. Before I go charging off to look for alternative companies, I’ve invested a lot in them already, as they’ve invested in me. 

But, should it look like I’ll be a salaried lady again — I’m asking for the health insurance off-set increase. 

Because screw that noise. 

"I want to go to there." Good thing I am.

Where there is smoke, there is fire. And where there is fire, we take off our knitted gloves and hold our hands to it. 

It’s not that bad. This work. It’s tragic and awful, and would certainly raise eyebrows in most circles. I just got through chronicling the years from high school through, “Then I got sober.” 

The phrase “shit show” comes to mind. 

And yet, I remind myself, in small, calm handwriting at the end of each of these morning writing sessions that I am not that person anymore. That I have been shaped by her experiences, surely, but that the shape and essence of who I am can’t and couldn’t be eroded. 

Someone commented yesterday that I am courageous. And as I go through and into this work on healing my relationship to relationships and love, I know that I am. 

Not (only) because I’ve chosen (or been “forced” by fate) to do this work at all, but because of all that has come before that hasn’t broken me. 

Injured, scarred, frightened me. Sure. But I sit here today, in my sweats, a space heater licking my calves, half-philz half-trader joes coffee in my mug, and I’m not broken. 

I have been through things and experienced them in a way that makes me cautious to the point of isolation against romantic relationships, but that doesn’t make me broken. That makes me habituated to a way of being. 

It all comes, for me, down to safety. With others, in my body, in relationship, in intimacy and authenticity. To slowly peel back the traumas and defenses and reveal that there’s nothing to be scared of anymore. Nothing that can harm me the way my high school/college/post-college years did. 

I won’t say that my love life in sobriety has been a cake walk or the pinnacle of wise. It used to have a lot of the same patterns as my drinking days. But it doesn’t anymore. 

However, there’s a middle ground, I know, between wanton and nunnery. 

I want to go to there. 

I want to go to the place where I am safe, even in exposing myself. Not because other people are so trustworthy, but because I am. Because my spidey-sense is coming back, and I want to get to a place where I trust it. I don’t have to tap out of the dating game entirely. I just have to listen when the alarms go off, and act accordingly. Take action accordingly. 

In previous iterations of my love-life, I have pressed the override button so forcibly, for moments, I did break. 

But, I’m not that girl-woman anymore. As I said, I’ve been shaped and molded by her experiences. But I also have my own inherent grace, fortitude, and hope. 

And so, where there has been smoke (read: my love life), I have sought the fire (read: my fearful heart). And it will be there that I remove my (boxing) gloves. And learn to love and trust my own self. 

"There's gotta be something better than this..." ~ Sweet Charity

Why, didn’t every 7th grader want to become a botanist and live in a tree to be away from people? 

I am at the radically awful and hopeful place of beginning to work on relationships, and my relationship to relationships. 

Coincidentally or not, the last time I started this kind of work, I was into the deep and dredging and combing-over-my-sad-history-of-self-abandonment-and-isolation part when I was struck with a bout of Leukemia, and had to stop.

Now that I’m through a round of work on my relationship to money, scarcity, “under-being,” under-earning, me and my mentor agreed that we could work on the other side of the “romance and finance” coin.

Color me thrilled. 

In fact, I am looking forward to it, … sort of. Not the work itself, but the results of it. 

I am not meant to continue my early patterns of self-insulation through isolation or self-abandonment/-destruction. Or, rather, I’m not content to. What I’m meant to do is really only up to me, isn’t it? And a few strokes of fate, I imagine. (hello, cancer.)

But, whatever role I can have in loosening the noose of “Trust No One,” I am signing up for it. 

I do feel that I am in a better place to begin this time than I was about 2 years ago. I’m working with someone who knows me well, who’s walked this path with and before me, and whom I trust and love.

Even though our particular histories are dissimilar, their endings and the feelings they’ve evoked in us became the same. 

She’s told me that my feeling of imminence, urgency & impatience with myself and "the world" will fade: I am a 33 year old healthy smart beautiful woman. Why the fuck have I never been in a relationship that’s lasted over 6 months, and only two of them at that? Why have I been unintentionally celibate for years on end or find myself particularly attracted to taken men? My “hot” years are fading; I want to take advantage of them!

And yet. I seem to land in the same place each time I try to throw myself into the ring, or try to avoid it. And so, it’s time to try something else. Something I know will work, because it works for thousands of other people who walk a path of recovery. 

I’m not stoked. But I am. 

It’s sad stuff to riffle through. There is a Trail of Tears that’s led me here. But I feel ready for this. No, not eager to riffle; yes, eager to heal, move on, move forward. Let whoever I’m supposed to be, or whoever I’m hiding, to integrate. 

Does this look like a bright shiny pot of gold(en haired children) at the other end? Likely not. 

I finished the work on money, and I’m still in the thick of the results of patterns that brought me here. But I imagine they’ll shift over time. 

So, too, I imagine with the love and relationship stuff. I won’t buy a wedding dress at the end of it. But perhaps I’ll buy date one. 

(p.s. this missive is in no way a passive request for dating invitations. but thanks.)  ;) 

From Thanksgiving to Thanksgiving.

Last Tuesday night as I sat at a rainy Oakland BART waiting for the shuttle to take me within walking distance of my apartment, my friend called.

She’d remembered that it was my first day of training for my department store sales job and wanted to know how it went. I told her, Good. A lot of corporate training-style stuff. Different department managers introducing themselves. Lots of powerpoint presentations about the history and brand of the company. And there were to be 3 days of this.

I told her I was most nervous (I told her I was trying to call it “curious”) about what would happen when I actually got onto the sales floor the following Saturday.

I haven’t worked retail since high school.

She told me we were both having “first day” experiences. She’d just this afternoon signed a contract with a small graphic design firm to be a partner with them, and she, too, was “curious” as to how it would all work out.

She told me that morning, she’d read this story about a guy who’s mentor suggested that he make a decision to not worry for one year. That whenever he got nervous, or tried to “figure things out,” or was anxious about an outcome, he made the commitment that he would simply not worry, that he would trust in the “universe,” and understand that he didn’t have to know the outcome. He just had to do what was in front of him and take small actions.

Needless to say, he had a great year.

As I huffed into the phone on Tuesday night, walking through the dark blocks toward my house, I asked my friend if she wanted to make a pact with each other. That for one year we wouldn’t worry.

And so, we did. We each announced to each other our commitment (middle names and everything) not to “not worry,” but to catch ourselves as quickly as we could, and to remember to “let it go,” and, for me, to have faith in the benevolence of the universe and the unfolding of my path.

When I’m scared of not making my sales numbers, and this whole retail thing doesn’t really work if you don’t. When I’m worried that retail hours and theater hours are the same and how will I be able to do both. When I am concerned that I quit a full-time time to have time to engage in creative project, to find a “fulcrum” job (more pay, fewer hours), and I've ended up in another full-time job…

I've been telling myself this past week, “From Thanksgiving to Thanksgiving.” Because that’s a year for my friend and me. One year of not worrying. Of trusting that it’ll not only be okay, but that it’ll be great.

To trust that if I simply do what’s next, make that next phone call to a friend, hang up that next sweater, show up to that next audition, the world will have a way of working out.

Sure, I’ve been nervous this week -- making calculations, staring wide-eyed at rehearsal schedules, wondering if this position will be temporary or not -- but I’ve been remembering that catch phrase, whispering it aloud, and it’s helped.

Today will be my second day on the sales floor. I am scheduled with them through the start of January with an option to extend. I have an audition set up for late January for a great musical. And I have COBRA payments to starting this month.

But I'm not going to worry one bit. ;P

Life: Whether you Like it or Not.

For many years, I’ve considered my personal and professional stagnation as though I were a traveler sitting at the base of a crossroad. The sign pointing in many directions reads any manner of options, but I sit there, gazing at the sign for eons, waiting for one of the arrows to light up, to indicate, This, here, Molly, is the way to go. This is the path to your destiny. This is the path to fulfillment, release, energy and passion. It may be cloudy at parts, but we promise, this is the way toward your highest good.

Yet, signposts have an annoying way of being inanimate, and this revelation has never happened.

But as I sit today, I recognize something new. Beyond the fork in the road, I’m beginning to see another path that I hadn’t identified before. It’s the path of my true desires.

I have sat waiting for the gods to tell me a or b, but secretly, I’ve always wanted c, and refused to see that as an option. “It’s hard for your to let yourself dream,” a therapist opined recently.

And it is.

To speak aloud what you truly want is to invite criticism and disappointment. Better to keep the dreams locked tight, even to the detriment of myself, because it’s “easier” than going after what I really want.

The problem with that pattern is that it means you don’t develop a history and a catalogue of places where you have moved beyond those doubts and spoken up, acted up, been seen. And so you continue to assume what you really want is not something you can have.

The history of denying what I want is long. It is best to be quiet, unheard, unseen, have few needs, because the lower you set the bar the easier it is to meet the meagerness.

I reflected yesterday on the way to our preview night of the play how you can always set yourself up to “succeed” when you place the bar achingly low. When you paint over your dreams with “realistic expectations,” you’re never called to reach out of your comfort zone. You can sit on the couch watching Netflix until the end of time, eating peanut butter out of a jar, and quietly erode all sense of the divine spark within you.

Not that I’ve done that. (wink)

But the divine has a way of being omnipresent, no matter what you do to ignore, dismiss, or erode its guidance and encouragement.

I haven’t a clue what experiences I’m opening up to as I watch this third path unfurl before me. Recognizing foremost that I’ve denied myself the ability to see what I’ve always wanted is a start. Recognizing that I’ve refused to acknowledge that I can have what I want, that my needs don’t have to be pauperistic, that it is safe in the reality of today to express myself is a start.

I’ve written many times before about the emerging option of being safe and seen. Safe doesn’t mean “not bold,” or setting the bar low, here. It means that I am not going to be punished for wanting what I want this lifetime.

This is a hard concept for me to integrate. But, more slowly than I would really love, I’m accepting that the sanest, safest, and surest way toward fulfillment is actually believing it’s available. Whenever I’m good and ready to set down the peanut butter and walk toward it. 

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. 

Someone will be with you shortly.

In the absence of more information, we fall back on the marching orders we know: Chop Wood, Carry Water. The Golden Rule. Look up, around, and away from yourself.

This morning, in an attempt to cull more information from the universe about where I should be focusing my energies with regard to career and income, I went into a meditation via a shamanic journey.

I didn’t get much. I asked other questions that I got some answers or insight to, but as to What on earth should I be doing next, who should I talk to, where should I focus, I got a whole lot of nothing.

And, in my own experience of meditation, the absence of information is itself information.

Stop trying to force yourself into a path, into action. It will be available when it’s supposed to be. The whole, "God is slow but never late," adage comes to mind. – One that galls me most of the time.

Because, often in my experience, slow but never late translates as “the last minute,” which really means, when you’ve given up all your plans and designs and have thrown your arms down, and said, okay, god/universe/soul/fate, whatever. Just whatever. I’m here, I’m done. I’m here.

It’s usually in these moments of surrender that I find information, that opportunities open up, that more is revealed.

Funny, as I think of it now, the play I’m in right now is a result of that “Whatever, here goes nothing” tack. The second audition of a day, after I’d pretty badly bombed the first, I decided, Whatever, I’m going to pull out (most of) the stops, and just throw it all out there, be as funny and into it as I can be because I have nothing to lose. I tried my controlled, “I want it to be this way” way, I tried working from the place of true terror and fear about what others would think of me, and that didn’t work out so great.

So, whatever, god, whatever you want. And lookie-loo what happened. It’s not to say don’t take action, it’s just to say, let go of my hold of the way I think things – me, mostly – should be.

And, with regard to other information I got in my meditation this morning, one of my questions was how I can stop stifling myself onstage? Because I do. I’m nervous and judging myself, and I want the audience to like me and my peers to esteem me, and I want to do a "really good job." And in that attempt, I’m so in my head that I’m not in my body, in my heart, in the moment, in the fun. And it doesn’t turn out how I want it.

It seems to me that the answer to most of this is, Be where you are, be who you are, and let it happen how it is.

That is so hard for me. And for most people, I imagine.

I want to know what to do next. I want a simple path from A to B. Or even a map to a complex path – I don’t care, just give me some coordinates! This, “be where you are and love yourself in and through it” thing is amorphous and feels ungrounded.

And yet, basing my actions on what I think I should be is as ungrounded as anything, because it’s not grounded in reality or the truth.

It is obvious to me when I reflect that taking actions out of fear, out of imagined people-pleasing, out of a panicked desire to “do the right thing” cause me more harm than good. And take up more time than it’s worth.

So, I will wait until more is revealed, as people often says it is. I will remember that there are no mistakes, only misinterpretations. I will try to embody the … no, I will try to let loose the confidence I know is stifled beneath the surface of my posturing and planning, and I will see what comes of it.

This whole transition for me is about embracing and sharing who I really am. It doesn’t work if I keep on trussing this person up in the shackles of my own expectations and a habit of low self-image.

Hello, Seattle, I’m listening. 

Icarus at the Bus Station

There is an adage I’ve heard: A new bus can’t pull into the station if there’s one already there.

The point being, unless you let something go, you can’t grab hold of something new.

This often comes up when people are talking about relationships, but it can be sagely advised around anything. Today, though, it does mean relationships.

There’s a second category of folks that I need to amend my relationships with, after those who I’ve fallen out of touch with for self-preservation. This is a category entitled: Men I intrigue with but don’t want a relationship with. ("with whom I don’t want a relationship," yeah, I know.)

But. This list, when written earlier this year comprised of 6 or 7 names. Now, there are only two left outstanding. The rest have fallen by the wayside as I’ve changed the electrically charged way I interact with them or have expressly stated I want to change the nature of our lovely, but ambiguous flirtation.

It’s exciting to flirt. It’s exciting to know that with a few taps on my phone, I can spark the interest of someone. It’s a boost to the ego -- and it’s totally unfair to us both. It’s a lie, really.

Sure, it’s fun, and I’m not saying that it’s wrong; it’s just not truthful for me, when I know that these are men who I don’t want to date or pursue a relationship with. For whatever reason.

Some, I just “don’t feel it.” We were never more than friends, to either of us, but there’s something nice about that extra “like” on your status update or the comment posted somewhere down your page, where you know they’ve had to dig to find it. Yes, most of these “intrigue” relationships (meaning, flirtatiously undertoned interactions) are acted out virtually, and that enhances their ease, their prevalence and the reluctance to “break them off,” since, who are we really hurting? Everyone “pokes” each other, right?

But, for me, I know it’s not right anymore. It’s distracting from what I really want, and using someone else as a tool to bolster my self-esteem. Neither of which get me to the healthful relationship (with myself or with someone else) that I’d like.

Some of the men on my list are simply fucked up and/or unavailable, and strangely(?), the last two remaining are in this subset.

It’s not that they’re just my friends who I flirt with; it’s not as innocent as a few extra “likes;” these two are possibilities in relationship-land, except that they’re not. At all.

And these are so hard to let go of, because they’re the most ambiguous, the most possible, and the most delicious. Delicious Evil: the curl of the lip when you think about them, your flirtation with them, what you’ve done with them, because these are not Rated G acquaintanceships you have had.

You like the thrill, the quickening of the pulse, and the slight tensing of your thighs.

Who.Wouldn’t?

But.

Here is where my current work comes in. I don’t want to stop these flirtations/more than flirtations, but I know this bus is not going to get me where I want to go. These are not available people. And despite the purring coo my body radiates when I consider them, my brain and heart can’t really take it.

I do want a relationship, with someone available to me. It’s nice to get the milk for free, but I’m ready to invest in a cow.

I’ve spoken to a friend of mine who has similar patterns with men and relationships, and I asked her honestly if there was the same kind of Icarus-style pull in her marriage. If there was that same forbidden, lustful quickening. If there was that, We’re going to blot out the sun with the heat of our passion. 

And, she told me, Honestly, No. It’s different.

You’re not going to get a cocaine high when you’re sober. That doesn’t mean it’s not worth being sober; it just means, No, there are some experiences that won’t be replicated in a healthy relationship.

Sure, it’s just one woman’s opinion, but I trust her, and I understand her analogy.

No, you won’t blot out the sun, but you won’t go down in flames either.

It’s up to me to decide which life I’d rather live, and which course I’d rather take. I know where this current “intriguey” bus leads – right back here, again.

So, I’m going to have to make a choice to be brave, and let this bus drive on without me, and trust that if I do, there will be a different one coming. (pun intended.)

Oh My Dear, Who’s Ever Ready?

I tore this quote from the back of a playbill a few years ago, and taped it to my fridge.

The play I’m in, there’s a song about waiting: waiting for marriage, for children, for your husband to come home, and eventually for death. The character pleads with us, with her husband, with herself: How long do I have to wait?

The ideas I have for my future are not unheard of or unrealistic; I’ve just been telling them to wait for so long that they feel out of reach. If you’re not moving toward them, your dreams will always feel that way.

I’ve been thinking this morning about worthiness: Who would want to hire me? What do I have to offer? Why would someone pay me instead of someone with more experience?

And, as romance and finance are never far from one another, I’ve been thinking about replacing some of those words with the same sentiment: Who would want to date me? What do I have to offer? Why would someone date me instead of someone who has their shit together?

The theme of worthiness is the undercurrent for both places of lack in my life. Or, more accurately, both places of unrealized dreams.

I do know intellectually, and often in my soul, that what I have to offer is not only magnificent, but unique. It’s about showing that to the world (and myself) in a way that I can support – in a way that I haven’t been ready to support or stand behind.

But, my dears, Who’s ever ready, indeed?

There has been a lot of waiting in my life, too. Waiting for me to get better, to get healthy, to get stable, to get grounded, to get organized, to get … “approvable.”

And mostly, that approval is internal. Waiting for my critic to shut the hell up long enough to see the beauty and the awe (that we all have, by the way).

Why haven’t I ever submitted an essay to a publication? I’m scared I’m not good enough (aka unworthy). Why have I never applied for an English professorship? I’m scared I don’t know enough (aka unworthy). Why do I … well, why do I remain single despite my awesomeness? I’m scared: my “picker” is broken, I can’t handle heartbreak again, I’m too gun-shy to really try. Aka, unworthy of letting myself try.

These are not easy admissions, but they’re also not the all of me, yet they’re part of the truth of me.

You can’t wait for someone else to knight you “worthy.” To pour magic bravery potion on you that enables you to write something you feel proud of and submit it. Or for someone else to see a potential in you that you’re terrified yourself of seeing.

You have to see it for yourself, and you have to make decisions from that place.

I’ve read enough Brene Brown over these few years to know, a) we all go through this in one form or another, and b) that there is a way out: It’s through.

It’s the small steps we (I) decide to take. Why didn’t I ever apply to teach English? Doesn’t matter – can you do it now? Why haven’t I ever coalesced my ideas for children’s workshops? Doesn’t matter – do you believe in yourself enough now to try?

I will not wait until I’m ready, because that’s an illusion. We (well, many of us?) are going to question our worth now and then, but it doesn’t have to hold us back from taking action anyway. Readiness is an illusion, just like perfection. Because, surely, that’s what I’m meaning, isn’t it? When I’m finally good enough to try, to be original, to be seen, to be loved, then I can masterfully get on with my business of being awesome?

That’s really not the way it works.

You take the steps, and hope the rest of you catches up. You overreach yourself, and yes there’s a moment of will you make it or not, but if you’re not reaching, you’re waiting. And the next step will never ever get closer, no matter how long you do. 

Light in the Dark.

According to my pock-marked memory, my dad held at least 5 jobs, sequentially, during the time I was growing up. Every few years, he seemed to move on to a new job, eventually landing someplace he retired from.

My mom variously was engaged in the following classes or hobbies:

bread-making

cake decorating

special effects make-up

Mary Kay-style beauty product sales

crocheting

knitting

part-time make-up artist

The closet became filled with half-finished projects and tools of a trade long abandoned. 

My dad also told me a few years ago that he rarely finished projects he began around the house (the wallpaper all done, except for that spot there; the fireplace paint stripped, but not re-stained) because of his own childhood lesson that if you finished something it could be criticized.

And I wonder what of this I’ve “inherited” through observation.

I've realized the Fulcrum idea only works if I’m earning more per hour and working fewer hours. It doesn’t, and won’t work, if I’m only working fewer hours!

I feel a little afraid today. Afraid that the time I’m intending to “buy” for myself will be eaten up by odd jobs in order to cull a living.

I guess I mention my parents’ work habits because I’m afraid that I’m like them. And can certainly see the seeds and small shoots of their behavior in my own.

Molly doing theater. Molly doing all organic cooking. Molly in a band. Molly wanting to take math classes, tutor kids, fly a plane. Molly quitting another job. Again.

And.

I’m not sorry I’m doing this.

It’s funny. Last year, playing bass in a band, I said I was finally living out a teenage dream I’d never let myself have. If I were more honest with myself then, I would have studied theater in college or engaged in it then. I would have tried the magpie lifestyle then. I would have held odd jobs, instead of the immediate office jobs.

I would have been a mildly responsible but creatively engaged young adult.

But, I wasn’t. That wasn’t my experience, and that wasn’t allowed. Coloring outside the lines was not allowed in my house. Or so I understood it.

I thought last night about this past year+ since returning to work post-cancer. About how I’ve been doing the things that a teen and 20something would do. It logically does follow that my professional work pattern would change, if I’m sort of going back to live the kinds of experiences I’d aged myself out of then.

And perhaps I’ll do them differently than I would have at 20 or 25. Perhaps trying to live outside of the lines at 33 is easier, or more grounded. I don’t know. But I do see that I seem to be veering toward a life that a lot of young people live, as if I’m reclaiming a lost youth, a lost innocence and curiosity and naïveté.

Is it “fun” to about to launch into the unknown? Well, yes and no. It’s fun to feel engaged in the creative world and think outside the box. It’s less fun to know the realities of salary requirements and health coverage and car payments and also try to think outside the box.

I don’t know. I don’t know what will happen. I know I have more work to do, more actual sitting down and developing a plan to do. And I think I’m going to have to reach out for help from folks to help me hold the space to do that.

It’s funny. (I keep on saying that! But, this all amuses the observer part of me, I’ll tell you!) Over a year ago, I sat with two women who helped me form a game-plan for alternative classes I could facilitate.

About 6 months ago, I sat with a different pair of folks, who helped me develop a different plan for an alternative after-school program.

I’ve been dipping my toe into these waters, and have subsequently thrown my arms up into their faces and said, But I don’t know, I don’t know enough and it’s too hard and I don’t have the tools.

I’ve abandoned this line of thinking as many times as I’ve lit the fires in the eyes of my friends, who’ve said, Molly, this is totally possible.

So, I guess it’s time for me to dig my notes out of the closet like my mom's half-finished quilts. Time to breathe deeply and let myself live the life I’ve consistently told others I want to live.

It’s also time for me to call those friends back in and have them hold my hand as I sort through those notes and make moves in this direction. Because, as I’ve said before, Sometimes I need someone else to hold the lantern of hope. 

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.