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well, hello my life

March 12, 2013 //
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Hi folks. It’s been an interesting time out here in lala land.

Thanks to those of you who wrote me over the past month, the words of encouragement were a great boon when I was grasping to pull myself up from the downest of down places I’ve been since 2008.

Have I talked at all about 2008? No? I’ll leave it be then. Let’s just say it was the worst time of my adult life, as in post-college-living-for-real life.  And yet, I easily/painfully learned more that year than in the previous ten combined. I am grateful for it. I am not yet grateful for this year so far – although I’ve well-chronicled my troubles with gratitude.

These past few months have rivaled that year, to be sure. I wish I could say hey, thanks guys, you were totally right and my last post about being in over my head was just my fear talking and nothing more – everything turned out fine and dandy. Which, I guess on one level, it did if only because the show happened and is generally fine, but not without doing me some heavy emotional damage. That musical basically broke me. Broke my spirit. Broke my confidence. Broke my health. Somehow it even broke my queerness – which was the weirdest thing. I wasn’t gay enough for the stupid gay musical.  I kept/keep waiting for the time when the satisfaction of seeing it through to completion would wash over me, when I could step back and heave a well-deserved sigh of relief and say, “Wow. I’m glad I did that.”

Not gonna happen. I wish I had these three months back. Hell, I wish I had these three years I’ve been attached to this project back. I’ve never been so beaten by something with no return to show for it. Even my wise, wise lady, ever the voice of reason and diplomacy in my turbulent life, can’t figure out what I was supposed to learn from this one. Don’t do projects you don’t feel passionately about? I guess, maybe. Although that’s already a tenet I live by fairly successfully.

I think – I have just the barest glimmer – that maybe this lesson has something to do with my tendency to make decisions seeking glory instead of truth. Apparently I have just violently informed myself that I’m (cough) too old for that shit.

The best thing is that I never have to do it again. So I’m going to try and sleep it off – my exhaustion has reached new-found depths. And I do realize the extreme first-world nature of this crisis – boo hoo, I directed a musical and it didn’t go well, yikes. I have food and love and shelter and abundance. I just seem to have misplaced my spirit – I’m sure I left it lying around here somewhere.

It’s times like these I wish I had a good gay buddy to hang out with. Someone who would buy me a beer (or four) and take me accessories shopping and compliment my hair. Because damn if my hair doesn’t do well in a crisis.

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Categories acting

in over my head

February 1, 2013 //
2

I’m in over my head with this one. I’m directing this new musical, this project that I’ve been working on for three years – half-heartedly, I admit, for at least the last year.

And somehow the self-fulfilling prophecy, the prophecy that I’m not good enough, not creative enough, not strong enough to do this is playing out as planned.

We’re a month into rehearsals. We just got a stage manager this week – something unheard of in the world of professional performing – the stage manager is usually the first hire, before even the actors. And this stage manager’s brilliant assessment of the way things are going: “The cast totally doesn’t respect you.”

Thanks, thanks for your support. As if I didn’t know that.

I keep waiting for the time in my life when I get to do the things I KNOW how to do already. The time when I’m not constantly racing to keep up with what’s going on. I mean, sure, learning is always awesome. I love it, I love reading, I love classes, I love improvement. I’m kind of an improvement junkie, my gf says.

But this kind of running, this kind of expectation from others that I can handle it all, that I’ll “just figure it out”, that I know already what I’m doing is exhausting. It’s unsustainable.

Yesterday was my partner and my 1st anniversary of our domestic partnership. I forgot entirely. I ended the night sitting alone on the front porch, eating fast food and crying, because my cast doesn’t respect me. My lady brought me tulips. She’s a good one. She knows I’m in over my head, and she’s the only one who doesn’t say “Oh, you’re just saying that” when I state my fears aloud. Because she knows I’m right. I’m nothing if not observant, and I can call people’s energy and emotions from 50 feet.

I keep waiting for this endless free-fall to be over, so the oblivion of the crash can overtake me. Three weeks.

 

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Categories acting

back to sir

January 25, 2013 //
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My office job ended last week, and with it the last of the feminine pretensions I had to keep up to play the game. It’s not that the office would have fired me if I didn’t wear a little makeup or women’s boots instead of my usual – it’s just that I made the decision to keep my boss very, very happy, and she’s a “looks matter” kind of woman.  Although she never said anything about my dress (a rotation of three very masculine yet still women’s suits with men’s collared shirts), I knew from the way she spoke about, oh, everyone else in the office that I’m sure she made many a comment about my appearance. However, I toed the line and all was well.

Now that I’m working from home I am back to my usual appearance – and with this small switch has come the return of me getting sir’d at every store and restaurant in town. Which is, quite frankly, awesome. I hadn’t realized how much I missed threading myself between the walls of gender perception.

Along those lines: I have a confession to make. When left to my own devices, I am not “dapper”. I know there’s a huge community of butches and androgynous and other-identified folk who happily sign on to the dapper banner, but really, I’m not one of them. I make the effort for my acting appearance, sure – but I’m most comfortable in a uniform of sorts, so I’ve collected my vests and ties and shirts and basically just swap color schemes on the same outfit anytime I need to go public.

But at home – comfy sweaters, old t-shirt, jeans. I wear grandpa slippers all day long inside.

I started noticing my non-dapperness recently while at rehearsals for the musical I’m directing. My cast includes one queer girl and one woman who has mostly lesbian friends (read: most of the people who worked on the L Word. Hello, Los Angeles). And the queer girl has a definite style, look, vintage dapper-ness all her own, even though she’s neither butch nor femme. The woman talks about her lesbian friends in a way that lets me know that they’re all impeccably coiffed all the time.

Meanwhile, I’m sitting on the dirty floor in my dirty chucks and cozy sweater, with my faux hawk not quite hawking, looking a mess as usual. Many people would Dress with a capital D just because they do every day – I can’t seem to muster the energy, or else I just have too many other things to think about. It’s like I’m the single mom of my own life.

Anyway – all the more reason why it’s nice to be sir’d again. Even in just a sweater, with my hair kind of in a weird/bad state these days (does anyone else have curls that suddenly decide to curl the other direction?), I can still go through an entire conversation at Target without the checker calling me miss. Dig it.

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Categories fashion, thoughts

hit reset

January 11, 2013 //
0

Hey there friends – I’ve been laying kinda low on the technology front for the past few weeks because that buzzing thrum that has been following me since October exploded as the Gregorian calendar year came to a close. Strangely enough, the turnover of the Mayan calendar year on December 21st made a much smaller blip on my radar than expected, since the world didn’t end and all (Tangent: I’ve actually followed the Mayan calendar for the past 12 years, and it’s one of the methods I use to interpret my purpose in this world. Also, astrologically speaking, it’s badass – in the Zodiac system, I’m a double Capricorn (goatish, indeed) but in the Mayan I’m a Blue Magnetic Storm. BOOM…. but I digress…).

I can barely keep up with the changes I’ve been dealing with, starting with my new agent that I signed with back in October, and then passing through the fact that now every waking moment of my life is consumed by the (gay!) musical I’m directing (that I wish were over already), and finally crashing to a not-even-close-to-stopping-point at the fact that I quit my survival office job in a moment of craziness and as of next week I’ll be out on my lonesome, trying to make money on my own again.

I don’t feel better yet, but I think I will soon. I have to.

My current mantra, said over and over all day, is “I can do this.”

I’m trying not to worry about believing it, and just focusing on saying it. Repeatedly. Until it comes true. I can do this. I can do this. All of it.

 

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Categories thoughts

for courage

December 14, 2012 //
0

This came through to me today in one of the blogs I peruse while pretending to work at my day job, and in light of my recent family troubles, struck home.

From a UK Guardian article on Regrets of the Dying from earlier this year:

#1 regret:

“I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.”

 

Now go out there and buy yourself a bow tie.

 

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Categories thoughts

my troubles with gratitude

November 21, 2012 //
3

It’s really difficult for me to be grateful.  Not because I’m not humble, or because I don’t believe in it, or because I’m that selfish. I’m sure I’m all of these things, a little bit. We all are.

It’s because I’m overwhelmed.

I’m ridiculously anxious about going to my folks’ house for the holiday tomorrow. I haven’t spoken to them in almost two months. I had made a deal with myself that I would limit contact with them until after the election, for one. And for two – I realized that anytime I interact with them, I feel like less of a person, and certainly less of an adult.

This morning my partner was encouraging me to say out loud three things I was grateful about, regarding my parents. I could only come up with two – but hey, it was better than zero. I believe that sounds have consequence, and that the words you say reverberate through the universe in a specific way, so I try not to say out loud anything I don’t mean.

And gratitude in general falls into a category that it is really difficult for me to mean. I don’t want it to be wasted or untrue. When I’m really, truly grateful, I can’t stop talking about it – but those times are fewer and fewer these days as I just feel harried and pressured by the pace of life. It’s not supposed to be like this.

So.

I’m grateful that both my parents are still alive.

I’m grateful that my father’s health is improving.

I’m grateful that my mother is happier than she was three years ago.

I’m grateful that I grew up with two sisters who taught me about the world, each in their own way, even if we don’t speak much now.

I’m grateful that I have a partner who is willing to lie in bed with me in the mornings and listen to my worries.

I’m grateful that I understand my fear, so that I can move out of it’s control.

These statements are going to be my armor for the visit home. They are the armor against the discussions of my wardrobe, my haircut, all the usual nonsense we gender-non-conforming folk have to deal with from those who don’t understand or who are afraid of the simple fact that we are living as we please regardless of what they think. These statements will be my armor for any discussion of politics or religion, any leading questions about why my acting career isn’t further along, why I don’t make more money.

I will be grateful for the company of the people who raised me. I am grateful the love me, even when their love feels more like pain.

 

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Categories thoughts
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