Too Many Thoughts... Not Enough Brain

This one may be a long one. Just warning you ahead of time.

It’s been a heck of a week. I worked over time every night this week, and Saturday and Sunday as well. The upside (in addition to the money) is that it takes some of the edge off of tomorrow being Monday-- I’m not returning to the job, I never left it in the first place.

This weekend I auditioned for The Shape of Things at Silver Spring Stage. Callback announcements are tomorrow, the call-backs themselves will be Tuesday. I’m crossing fingers, but at the same time I don’t know if I could even do the show; it’s the same day as a friend’s wedding. No way I’m skipping that.

I’ve started talking to someone again I hadn’t seen in three years. We managed to meet up on Friday night, and I met some friends of hers. She’s doing very well for herself. She succeeded in what she set out to do three years ago; namely establish a medical career. There’s no feeling in the world quite like making a dream come true: An honest to goodness “I hope I hope I hope I can do/become/reach xxxx some day.” That much I can say from experience.

I started work on a new project this week, which I don’t want to talk too much about in case I end up not finishing it. It’s going to be a big one, and damn it, the last time I undertook something like this it took a year of steady work to reach any kind of solid conclusion. But I saw it through then, and I know I can do it this time. My writing style has evolved a lot since then. Novelists like Terry Pratchett and Christopher Moore have had time to leave a strong impact on my mind, and it’s been a positive one.

There are few feelings I have more dislike for, than not knowing what to do. I hate not knowing what to do. The aimlessness I felt last week has had time to ferment into something more attention-grabbing, and it switched trains of thought for good measure.

Now I know what I’m working on again, but that’s just another in a series of damned projects. Write a play. Get it performed. Act in one. Write a comic book. Get it printed and fail. Write a screenplay. Enter a contest. Walk another three miles. Get a voice-over gig. Write a blog. Write a poem. Write an article. Perform and publish and enter the contest and audition and exercise and type or make the attempts and fall flat. And do it again.

Incidentally, where does See Your Friends fit in the picture? Save Up Some Money?

And what is it for? What the hell is it for? I know I want to do these things, these creative things, and I’m doing them. But what are they amounting to? What’s the point? Something a friend of mine said last night… didn’t sit right with me. We’d just left a community theatre performance, and were talking with someone who was interested in auditioning. I said “Don’t call it a hobby.” My friend said that it was a hobby. And she was right.

I found acting when I was in High School. I can’t say I discovered it. Saying I discovered Acting would be like saying Columbus discovered America. Other people were there first. I found acting in High School. My parents were getting a divorce at the time. The biggest reason I stayed after school to work on shows, was simply not to be home. That, and I had absolutely no talent for sports. To think and focus on other things for a time. And it worked. It worked great, and I found that I was good at it. I embraced it, said it was what I wanted to do with my life. Acting was a lifeline.

I went to college for it, with two supportive parents behind me all the way. I studied for four years, learning technique and stage politics (ugh) and superstitions and the ins and outs. Acting was valid. It was a class. It was a school. It was what I did, it was my life.

I graduated and found work, amazingly enough, as an actor. I was a working goddamned actor, for a year. The company which could provide room and board and a nice per diem on the road couldn’t provide health insurance. Or money to pay college loans. Acting was a job, and a damn fulfilling one. It was still my life.

That was over two and a half years ago.

I haven’t been paid to act in a year. Oh, I’ve *performed* and been paid, on stage and behind a microphone, but that didn’t require acting so much as a flexible set of vocal cords. Acting is… a hobby, now. One I take very seriously, but to call it more than that… doesn’t necessarily fit.

Yes, I write. I write every week, almost every day if I can help it. People poke light fun at the compulsion, or the characters I come up with. Sometimes there’s a genuine interest. And all I’m doing with any of it… is seeking validation.

Validation for my place here. Evidence that I’m not wasting my or anyone else’s time by breathing valuable air. Since I was old enough to call myself a night owl, I’ve needed something to work on. Something to finish and polish and... I don’t know, put on the metaphorical shelf.

It’s something I’m going to have to think on a bit more.

More to follow. Definitely more to follow.