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.