Tuesday, July 2, 2013

no time to waste, no time to kill

I don't know what made me say it.  I had just taken a nice nighttime walk on the beach near the Cape house I grew up in, so happy that the man I love finally got to see this precious gem in my family's lives.  We were holding hands and getting wet sand between our toes, looking at the mist and starting to climb a jetti to get to the next beach, and I finally said it out loud.

"I'm just feeling kind of... sad lately."

As soon as it came out of my mouth, I suddenly had an epiphany.  I was admitting this to my darling that I look to for almost all comforts, the comforts that I can't substitute with prayer or my mother, and he replies with almost a laugh.  It had struck him that he may be unhappy as well (disclaimer: not with each other!)

"Yeah... me too. I don't know why. It's funny that you said that."

I held him close, knowing he's one of the few things helping me keep my sanity.  We're both workaholics you see, and as great as that is to be a "hard worker" and admired for tenacity, it can be exhausting.

Sleep? What's sleep?  Coffee is my fuel, there's plenty of time to sleep when you're dead.  But more importantly, my calendar would make you cry.  I have it color-coded thank you much, and that thing is a fucking rainbow.  Running around doing at least two things per day that are work-related and very time-consuming, can make you go insane.  But it's a very slow process that creeps up on you, you're going about your business and have no idea how it's affecting you, until one morning you wake up and realize you're in a mattress-lined room and you can't move your arms. 

Suffocated by your own commitments.  You think you love all these things you're doing, and yes you do love them very much, but you should probably love them separately and spread out instead of climbing all over each other like the wrong flavors of ice cream melting into one another.  You start to take bites out of the world's most random sundae and you feel sick.  Because really, no one should mix peanut butter and black raspberry ice cream with with coconut sprinkles.  That's just gross.

If you knew how much (or how little) money I took home every week for the amount of work I actually do, it would make you sick.  "Get a new job," you'd say, "it's not worth it!"  Oh, but it is.  Whenever I make a new friendship or a connection, that's a new possible job (and of course a friendship).  The time I spend onstage or in front of a camera when I can turn my "India" brain off and pretend I'm someone else is very well worth it.

There is what's called taking pride in your work.  But performers are also very prideful.  They want to do as much as they can, as often as they can, and stay one step ahead of everyone else.  Then you read or hear about someone you know doing slightly better than you, and it just guts you.  This is competitive, and it's our lives.  Work is not something you leave at the office and don't think about when you go home, you live it.  It's what you breathe, eat, and bleed.  If you can't handle that, then this is not the business for you. 

People wonder why I'm OCD about scheduling, I plan everything and I have anxiety when I have a day in my calendar with absolutely nothing.  That day will soon have blocks on it that say, "gym, laundry, guitar, youtube" because I just can't handle not scheduling myself! 

So I go down the Cape this weekend and I'm leaving in two hours and NOW the sun starts to maybe peek out?!  No wonder I'm stressed, it's been raining and I had no way to turn my brain off and let myself fry on the beach for three days.  I ended up almost literally running around with my Nana the entire time, who's like me but old so while I'm worrying about three auditions and a rehearsal I've got to prepare for, she's worrying about the guy fixing the bathroom tile like it's the apocalypse if he doesn't come and do it tomorrow.

This is why movie stars go to the middle of the equator on an island for weeks at a time.  They work 10-16 hour days for a couple of months and then just take off.  I'm actually jealous of people that go to work, go home, and don't have to do anything important.  They have their cute hobbies like jewelry making or knowing all of the football stats for the year, while I haven't sat down and watched an entire Red Sox game in weeks and it feels awful.  I love baseball.  I don't even have time to look up baseball stats!  Someone got injured this weekend and I can't even remember his name! What the hell is wrong with me, I thought I was a Bostonian?!

What to do... Welp, for starters I'm going to go for a run on the beach before I'm forced to leave this heavenly retreat.  Then I'll probably have a little cry on the way home, and then suck it up and bury it all deep down until my next mental collapse.  Sounds like a plan, right?  Usually I wait until I can't take it anymore, I finish up a few projects and then I retreat to Millbury where things used to make sense and I had no responsibilities in my life aside from working at a movie theater and deciding which bathing suit to wear on the canoe.  Well supposedly I have a week off in August so perhaps that should be the time to plan another trip to my mother's. 

God I can't wait to just pick up and move.