(no subject)
An excerpt from my paper journal written in February '04, my first trip to the American College Theatre Festival.
This conference has been an especially hard one on me, its weight smothering me in an overbearing, yet seemingly inescapable pressure in several criss-crossing, sometimes overlapping directions. Some of them I probably have control over, some of them I may not, but I think the common theme found in it all has been that unavoidable word creeping into my current life more than I'm naturally comfortable with--failure.
It's the very fear of that word which has prompted and promoted many of my short comings this trip. Failure--in two syllables images of life stale, rotten and brown are conjured to the surface, stinkingly unsatisfied. Life wholly incomplete, ripe with the bitterness of dissatisfaction, replete with the realization that you will never achieve what you most want... Or the realization that you've gone as far as you will.
... Is it the realization that I love the theatre in all its forms. My love and loyalty for this business and this work that has an almost Greek philosophy. God I want to be here, drown myself in it, immerse myself in the art and live there--life would be so complete.
But unless I can speed my education up, I will be nothing more than a slave to the mundane, barely able to practice my art. Victim to the enemy of the arts. I am a victim of my own bad choices in the past but I want to redeem that. I want to be educated! But the fact that I can't right now and because I can't get the help and because I don't have the contacts or resources or social status to get the help I'm left instead to suffer for it, even in the happiness and appreciation where I have just such a small, delicate but delicious sampling.
So I worked my ass off and in the fall of last year I started going to school full time and I killed myself every quarter by taking 25 credits. And now the University of Washington is giving me $14,000 to go to school this coming academic year!
One year ago things seemed so hopeless. It's pretty amazing what can happen in such a relatively short amount of time.
This conference has been an especially hard one on me, its weight smothering me in an overbearing, yet seemingly inescapable pressure in several criss-crossing, sometimes overlapping directions. Some of them I probably have control over, some of them I may not, but I think the common theme found in it all has been that unavoidable word creeping into my current life more than I'm naturally comfortable with--failure.
It's the very fear of that word which has prompted and promoted many of my short comings this trip. Failure--in two syllables images of life stale, rotten and brown are conjured to the surface, stinkingly unsatisfied. Life wholly incomplete, ripe with the bitterness of dissatisfaction, replete with the realization that you will never achieve what you most want... Or the realization that you've gone as far as you will.
... Is it the realization that I love the theatre in all its forms. My love and loyalty for this business and this work that has an almost Greek philosophy. God I want to be here, drown myself in it, immerse myself in the art and live there--life would be so complete.
But unless I can speed my education up, I will be nothing more than a slave to the mundane, barely able to practice my art. Victim to the enemy of the arts. I am a victim of my own bad choices in the past but I want to redeem that. I want to be educated! But the fact that I can't right now and because I can't get the help and because I don't have the contacts or resources or social status to get the help I'm left instead to suffer for it, even in the happiness and appreciation where I have just such a small, delicate but delicious sampling.
So I worked my ass off and in the fall of last year I started going to school full time and I killed myself every quarter by taking 25 credits. And now the University of Washington is giving me $14,000 to go to school this coming academic year!
One year ago things seemed so hopeless. It's pretty amazing what can happen in such a relatively short amount of time.