To be.

Today I am feeling very nostalgic and I wasn’t ready for it.  You know that head-space that makes protecting your heart a bit easier?  I’m not there today. 

A friend quit one of my improv groups today.  For personal reasons – he needs to focus more time on his family and wants to feel less over-extended, which I totally understand, but I am unreasonably saddened by his departure.  Not only is he exceedingly funny and smart and an overall awesome guy, I really like performing with him. I really like touring with him.  He is one of those people who the more you know them, the more you like and respect them.  Those people are very very rare. 

I am also feeling more than a little lost.  I’ve been working so hard during the day.  I’ve been so focused to make that part of my life a success that I’ve lost focus on what makes my heart sing.  I haven’t been auditioning.  I haven’t been self-submitting. I haven’t been sitting in at open calls.  

One of the worst slash hardest things about being an actor is that you can literally NEVER relax.  You can never take a break or a rest.  Because then people forget about you and you stop working.  If you stop hoofing it, even for one month, when you get yourself back in the game you essentially have to start all over.  

I am tired.  

But not so tired that I am wiling to stop trying.  Not so tired that I am willing to accept my daytime life as my only life.  My daytime life is making my hair turn grey.  My daytime life is sucking whatever kindness I have left in my heart dry.  My daytime life is giving me angry wrinkles.   My daytime life makes it hard for me to enjoy and embrace my night and weekend life because I’m so tired trying to do both.  I am exhausted.   My friend choosing his daytime life over his night/weekend life makes me sad.  I know that everyone gets to a point where you decide that what you love can either become your livelihood, a fond memory or it officially becomes just a hobby.  I am so close to (and have lived in) the livelihood camp that I just cannot imagine a world where I make the hop over the fence into the hobby grass.  

I mean, I can actually, but I would die a little every day.  I can see how much easier my life would be if I gave in and sold out.  I can see how much more free time I would have.  How much more productive my social life would become.  But I also can see that making that choice would kill me a little every single day.  I would become an empty hallow shell of a person and I just can’t. I just can’t. 

So I’ll take my big-girl pill today and accept that as an adult I will just always be tired.  My immediate desire when presented with free time will always be to take a nap.  I will be forever multi-tasking.  I will forget what it is to feel relaxed.  I will keep fighting the fight to be a balanced, secure AND artistically satisfied person.  I will keep waking up and pushing myself to be do more.  To BE more.  

To be.