Last Tuesday was an oddly great day.
I learned recently that you can do this thing where only part of your post will show up on the dashboards of people and they’ll have to click to read more. I’ve done it for this post to a) see how it works (i.e. if I’ve done it right) and b) because I’m hoping that the few people that peruse my blog (or will peruse my blog) (also I don’t think this is much of a blog so those words are in quotes)… You know. I was going somewhere with that b) but then I realized that I had no reason to do that. This is going on the internet. I have to deal with the fact that it will be in the public eye. I can only hope that I won’t be terribly crucified for it when it is read.
There is a lot of history to this post, for me, for what I will write, but I don’t want to get into all of that. I’m going to start at the beginning of the ending and just write through it. It’s my coping mechanism, and I’m realizing that I need to go back to it, and that I’ve needed to go back to it for ages.
(The song in my head for this post is Billy Joel’s “For the Longest Time”.)
Tuesday morning I woke up with no intent to go to class. Unfortunately I knew that I had to give a presentation that day about Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew modeled in the style of MTV’s Jersey Shore that I didn’t want to give and wish I had given the Thursday previous.
Lo and behold class that day had been canceled. So I spent two hours doing basically nothing but shooting the shit with some people around the theatre department. Here’s where the important part comes in.
Theatre department resident singing superstar Ji had an outdoor free concert with the Soul Ensemble at noon. I ended up out there in the fall sunshine with the costume shop manager Shakeia. We had a good time. It seems like the entire department showed up to cheer on Ji. I wondered if we were embarrassing her, but she didn’t seem to mind.
About twenty or thirty minutes into the concert I realized something. Four years ago I had been in Ohio at Oberlin University, a private college/music conservatory. Everything there was fall foliage, greens and oranges and browns and gorgeous. And there was music, a lot of music. Everywhere I walked there was music. I wanted to go there so badly, but money and desire don’t necessarily go hand in hand. I wanted to act really, really badly too… But desire and ambition and talent don’t always menage a trois.
After four years I had come full circle. I finally had everything I had wanted then. A place where I was comfortable, there was beauty and music, and something to do in life. Just recently I was fortunate enough to be cast in Richard III for the Southern California Summer Shakespeare Festival. Now I’m about to start rehearsals for David Henry Hwang’s F.O.B. It was everything that I had pined for as a high school senior.
Now that I finally feel like I’ve graduated high school and began college I’m graduating college and going off to the adult world.
But in the fall sunshine I had a moment of perfect clarity, my only regret is that I didn’t have it four years ago.
I have everything I want in life, and everything I need isn’t too much different from everything that I want. Life is good, as long as you’re willing to make it good.
That doesn’t mean that I don’t want anything anymore, I do. I just feel better equipped to handle the wanting now.
That’s the only important thing now. To be able to handle.
