Where Do I Go From Here

I am writing another entry simply because the discovery of the entry calendar made me sad.  They look so sparse over the last half of a year.  Even further really.  Or maybe I’ve gone inverted and I should be happy I have to write in this less.  I feel I just owe this place so much.  It’s been part of my life for five years now.  Or is it longer? 

"God’s Favorite" opens tomorrow and everything has come together rather well for Community Theatre.  Mark still doesn’t know his lines, and I know you’re wondering what I’m talking about, but basically the main actor in the show, who basically carries a large portion of the show’s success, is not good with lines and is having a hard time with a select number which makes the show drag and leaps some jokes.  But I can’t help him anymore than I have.  I can’t help him learn lines, he just needs to commit time to doing it.  That’s the thing about Community Theatre though, if they’re not good, they won’t get better, because they can’t commit.  It’s not their life.

Directing, acting, and writing, however, is my life.  That’s what makes it so hard thinking that I may never work with anyone but community theatre people from now on….or even semi-professional actors.  I want to work with the pros who will listen and commit and who are getting paid to do it so there is something not only at stake if they fail, but they’re the people who want to get good.  I already know I’m good.  I have complete faith in myself.  No matter what anyone might say off-and-on about my acting and directing, the general public — and by that I mean not the general public as much as the general people I believe to have creditted opinions — like me.  The real general public does, too.  You see, it’s a funny thing, but I will insult the general public for their lack of taste, but if you’re doing something they don’t like, generally it’s not very good.  It’s just if they do like you, that doesn’t mean you’re NOT doing something that’s not very good.

Anyway, I’m trying to figure out where to go from here in life.  I’ve been writing a little, pushing myself more and more to writing each day.  It will be easier in River Falls when I don’t have interruptions every five seconds from my parents who believe that typing is not a valid way to spend a day — no matter what you’re typing.  This, of course, coming from my mother who spends her entire day typing.  Such is life.

I’m thinking that I’m going to go to California.  I’m going out there to seek whatever I can find.  I can’t be one of those people who doesn’t succeed because I’ve given myself too much credit already and, no matter how hard I try, I can’t help but see most of the people stuck around Wisconsin as failures.  They’re not all failures.  Some of them live great lives and have achieved great things that they wanted to achieve.  But so many just don’t want anything.  They just take up oxygen and space.  It’s sad.

I can’t be them.  I can’t be like that, sucking up dreams forever.  I couldn’t stand the feeling of defeat.  So I think I’m going to California at the end of the summer and applying for a couple of relatively nice jobs that I’ve found and could probably get with a good interview.  Where I’ll live, I don’t know.  How I’ll survive, I don’t know.  I’ve just got to go and if I starve to death, I starve to death.  I don’t want to live without some semblance of the success I’ve dreamed of.  And this isn’t a vain decision.  This isn’t like everyone else’s: "I’ll do this" and then they don’t.  This is final.  I’m going.  I have to.  It’s time for me to live, I guess.

May a little luck follow me.