On my mind, off the top of my head...

Disclaimer #1:  I have a lot of first world problems. I have a job that pays me well. I have shelter, food, clothing, people I love and people who love me and I know how blessed I am.  There are several people near and dear to me who are un- or under-employed right now, and I wish that I could change that. (But pretending to be happier in this job will not help them find one, either.)

Disclaimer #2: I am actively looking for a new job. This rant is not the rant of stagnant waiting, but of pushing against what feels like a giant brick wall.

Spending every day in the wrong job is an interesting phenomenon.  My bosses an co-workers are pleasant. There is nothing inherently painful or demeaning or awful about the work itself.  And yet it is taking all of my will power, a physical exertion, to stay in my cubicle, not to scream, not to cry.

I'm starting to slip. I realize that I mutter under my breath, "I've gotta get outta here."  When my cubicle neighbors and I start talking about our Big Boss, the director of the division, I get a little Soapboxy and worry that I will say something impolitic or unwise or God forbid say what I really think about all this nonsense.  Actually, to be fair, I do say what I really think sometimes. But it's usually whispered. And always left unspoken is the "and that is why I have no intention of sticking around here one second longer than I have to, and NO, I will not be at this GIGANTIC ANNUAL MEETING where it is my job to coordinate all kinds of things that  I DON'T UNDERSTAND BECAUSE I AM NOT A SURGEON, and I'll try to give you as much notice as I can but DAMMIT I HAVE GOT TO GET OUT OF HERE."

I hate my job because of the politics of the organization -- the people we have to defer to, the (occasional) rude treatment that has to be ignored.  I hate it because it makes me feel stupid and incompetent, and I know in my heart I am neither of those things. I am not a surgeon and so there are parts of my job that I will NEVER understand. 

Spending your days in the wrong job is like always wearing clothes that don't fit properly - you make look fine, but you're never comfortable, you are always self-conscious, and always feel shabby and inadequate.

I have a timeline. I have promised myself  that I will not go to this awful conference this year. I have committed to a show in the fall that will certainly be in conflict with this conference, and I know where my priorities are. This means I have to quit by the end of August.   I recently went through an interview process for a job that would have been good, but not perfect, and I didn't get it.  I believe in my heart of hearts that a better, maybe even an awesome job, is out there somewhere.  I've been seeing a career counselor, who has been helpful, but I'm still not sure where to find this awesome job. I have skills and experience, but not necessarily in the relevant areas. I don't really know what I want to do, just how I want to feel while I'm working there. 

I'm posting here because it's passively public - it's better than screaming out loud at my desk, it's public enough for me to feel like I'm yelling, but I don't imagine anyone reads this anymore and I don't mind if no one ever does.  Though I may need to get a real grown up blog and start writing, if only to maintain my sanity.

I know I've already said it, but I've gotta get outta here.

I am inspired by the reflections and retrospectives of friends old and new, near and far, to take some time today to think over the last 10 years.

2000
I finished grad school.  With the wrong degree.  Oops. I got a semi-government job in DC.  My sister and I moved into our second apartment together.  I went to a wedding in August, where  I asked Steven what I should do with my life.  He told me to move to Chicago and start acting.  I pooh-poohed this idea.   (Too hard.  I don't have a bohemian soul.)

2001
I moved to Chicago to start acting.  
I auditioned a little.  I lived in a wretched apartment I named "The Den of Non-Equity."  The world changed.  I wondered if I would ever feel normal again.  I went into debt.

2002
I started work at the YMCA. I got cast in a show.  It was an awful production,  but I made one friend, thus setting the precedent that even the worst theatre experiences usually have one really good thing about them.  I moved out of the Den of Non-Equity and on to Melrose Place. I did another show.  I met a guy on whom I had a ridiculous, fruitless, and on-again off-again crush for several years.  And I had almost forgotten about it.

2003
I moved into my current apartment.  I was in FLOSS! - a show that included some of my biggest fears as an actor: dance, improv, and audience interaction.  And then I met New Leaf.  RECKLESS.  For the first time, I began to feel like I was putting down my own roots in Chicago, not just attaching myself to my old friends and their friends.

2004
Strange.  I don't have much to say about this year.  I was in a couple of shows, one meh, one wonderful but very difficult.  I maintained.

2005
And now things get interesting.  Something clicked for me as an actor  during AS IT IS IN HEAVEN  - this whole "objective" thing started to make some visceral, experiential sense.  My sister gets married! And then Bakerloo!  To be an actor, and nothing but an actor, for 4 whole weeks!  To meet wonderful and insane people, reconnect with old friends, put down a new set of roots! 

2006
Leap and the net will appear.  That's what I told myself when I quit the YMCA.  Bakerloo again, and then a kids show! Temping!  Losing 10 pounds just by worrying about money.   It's not about making a living, it's about making a life.

2007
To grad school or not to grad school?  Not.  But that's OK.  THE PERMANENT WAY at New Leaf.    Transformational.  Renewing, in many senses of the word.  And then Charlie.  Oh, my beloved, much-adored, much-talked about nephew.  I was so excited to meet him, and I didn't even have an inkling of how amazing he would turn out to be.   And then, good Lord, THE DINING ROOM.  Whoah. 

2008
Some turmoil in the spring.  Then CHERRY ORCHARD in the summer - doing something I never thought I could do.  And then SIX YEARS in the fall.   What a dream.  Probably the most challenging and fulfilling role of my whole life.  Getting notes in metaphor form from Jess.  Being married to SPF onstage for the first, but not the last time.  Losing 20 pounds.

2009
Great successes for New Leaf.  Lots of fruitless and frustrating auditioning.  THE LONG COUNT - an artistic challenge, and a personal obstacle course, that I'm still not sure I've found my way out of.  Becoming very frustrated and bored with my day job.  MUCH ADO with Bakerloo, feeling like I'm waking up after a long sleep.  Maybe even a coma. 

2010 already has some pretty great things in store: The (edward) Hopper Project with WNEP (which deserves its own entry - it's THAT awesome); THE WRECK OF THE MEDUSA with the Plagiarists, a new niece or nephew in late June, new opportunities for New Leaf.  


Ok, so those are the highlights.  The plot summary, if you will.  With some subplots omitted.  

I could write my journey through the aughts as moving from feeling powerless to feeling empowered, or as sloughing off some of the unnecessary dead skin-like baggage I've been carrying, or as a gradual shift from blurry soft-focus to clarity.  But that would imply that I'm at the end of something.

As I look ahead, there are still some major things I want to change in my life -- things over which I have varying degrees of control.  Instead of resolving to do anything differently next year, I think I am going to try re-solving.  Looking back at all the things I listed, and perhaps even more at the things I left out, there are patterns, or cycles, and though I often think I should have figured it all out by now, I know some paths are circular, or spiral, and I just keep coming back.  So I am going to re-solve those things I already solved once.  And solve them again, if I have to.

Starting with a glass of water.

Something about today, about my life, the universe, and everything, made me want to write something.

So I did. 

Resistance Training

( Ahem. )

by Marsha Harman, Age 32.  And a half.

Today is my half-birthday.  When I was a kid, a half-birthday was celebrated in typical inane Harman family style with things like a half-card, a half-cake, and singing every other syllable of the Happy Birthday song.  That's right.  It sounds like this:

 "Hap-- birth --  to ---
 Hap-- birth --  to ---
 Hap-- birth-- dear -- sha....
-- py  --day  ---YOU!"

When one turns, say 7 1/2, there is nothing more exciting and frustrating than saying "I am HALF-WAY" to 15!"  It makes it seem so close, and yet a whole lifetime away.  (Today, I am half-way to 65.  This is both frightening and a bit of a relief.)

Yes, this is all very nice, Marsha, but how does it make your mother a genius?  Well.  On your birthday, you get presents.  On your half-birthday, you get *responsibilities.*   And when you are me, you are very very excited about them.  One year, I even asked my mom if I could take on BOTH putting away my own laundry AND making my own bed.  She put up some resistance (evil genius woman) but eventually relented. 

This year, on a whim, I asked my mom what I should take on as a new responsibility.  Her response was rather surprising.  She suggested "buying a condo"  "becoming an overnight success" (this very tongue-in-cheek) or "moving back to MD." 

Whaha?

By way of (further) background, my mother (both my parents, actually) have been nothing but supportive of the choices I have made in my life.  As a 32-year-old single woman with a small but steady career in theatre and a series of day jobs with no future, I realize that this is a rare and beautiful gift.  They have never made me feel like they wish my life is other than it is, never pressured me to "settle down" or "get a real job" and the comments about "moving back home" are so few and far between that I know they only come out of the fact that they miss me.  (And I miss them, and if I could have my life in Chicago and be only 20 minutes away from my family and soul-friends in DC, I would do it.  But I can't.)

So, I was all prepared to reflect on the 6 months since my birthday, on what I've accomplished and experienced and what I'd like to accomplish and experience in the next 6 months -- long lists, both of them -- and now I find myself looking at my whole LIFE, thinking, am I running out of time to do those big things?  Does not having those things now preclude not wanting, or finding, or doing them later?

I do take some inspiration from a small moment in the film "Milk."  Now, obviously, there's a lot of capital-I inspiration to be found in that movie.  A lot of grand-scale, change-the-world, hopeful inspiration.  But this is a little moment that bookends the movie.  When Harvey Milk turns 40, he says, "Forty years old.  And I haven't done a single thing I'm proud of."  And then the movie follows him for the next 8 years, chronicling a host of big and small brave things that he does, things he can be proud of, things that have a deep and lasting effect on his friends, his community, the city, the world. 

Perhaps then, my new responsibility for 32 and a half shall be to do something I'm proud of. Something that I haven't done before, maybe.  It's an interesting proposition.   Thanks, Mom..

As promised, further personal reflections on the implications of taking on a Curator role for The Long Count at New Leaf.    I'm not entirely sure why I'm writing this in such a (semi-)public forum instead of just a regular old journal, but I think I need to understand it, and so I need a metaphor.  And I do my best metaphors for an audience.  That's my working theory, at any rate.

So. In the last few weeks, things have been feeling kind of bleak for me, personally.  Feeling like the world doesn't value me for me.  Coming off of the tremendously fulfilling experience of Six Years at New Leaf and starting 2009 with nothing lined up, not many auditions, not getting cast, then not getting called back, then not getting called in, and wondering if I'll ever work in this town again.  Add to that some jostling and bruising of the heart, making me feel like I needed an artistic outlet even more.  So, not dark, not awful.  Just kind of like sitting in a cave, and knowing that there is a beautiful day outside because I was just there but not knowing how to get back outside. 

And so I start grasping at straws.  Or, perhaps, at fireflies.  (Fireflies in a cave?  Why not?  It's my metaphor.)  These little tiny ideas that are little flickers of light in the dim shadows.  These are not strong, not solid.  I reach for one (Ooh  - maybe this company will cast me in this amazing play!) after another  (A dashing, tall, dark, handsome stranger will fall madly in love with me -- tonight)  The flashes remind me of the light outside.  But I'm still just sitting in the cave, now with a firefly in my hand, which will surely die if I keep holding on it it, but when I let it go, it will just keep flashing at me, and reminding me of what that sunshine looked like and felt like. 

So I'm reaching, and reaching, and getting out of breath from the effort, and resenting my time in the cave, and feeling like anyone as smart and wonderful as I am should have found her way out by now and reaching a point of utter frustration and running around in circles in the cave, hitting my head, pounding my fists against the walls, looking and looking for the secret trap door that will magically let me out. 

And then. I trip. On something heavy.  That feels like a rope.  It's not pretty, per se.  Hell, I can't even see it really -- it's too dark in here and the fireflies don't illuminate anything but themselves.  I pick up one end of the rope.  It's solid.  I tug.  There is resistance.  I take a step toward the resistance.  This feels familiar.  Kind of.  Yes.  No, I know it now.  This will lead me out of the cave.  It will not lead me out the way I came in, and when I get outside the landscape will be different.  But this is the way out. 

So, I tie the rope around my waist and start walking.  But the fireflies are still there, and so pretty!  They fly ahead of me and behind me, even as I am trying to hold on to this rope and focus on walking, they are distracting and tempting and part of me wants to just sit back down in the damn cave and collect enough fireflies make a warm glow.  And wouldn't that be easier, anyway.  The rope is not how I imagined I would get out.  And it doesn't sound like the kind of fun I was hoping for.  But I'm going to let me brain win this one, I think.  Give my little heart time to rest as my head and my feet lead me along the path of the rope.  It will lead uphill, I suspect.  And then I will stop seeing the fireflies.  And then things will really look bleak.  But this rope feels really solid.

That's where I am.  Like all good metaphors, it is more true than the literal truth.  But incomplete.  I am deeply excited about this metaphorical rope in its own right, and have been for months -- I just never suspected that it would become a necessary step for my own personal growth, but if you've been following the New Leaf season and our over-arching question, you will have to agree that there is a certain poetic justice to the fact that I find myself building a future from a present I didn't expect. 

Sidebar:  I wonder if there is anyone who would pay me to create metaphors for a living.  You see, I believe Life is like a metaphor.  It always means something else. 
 

I posted on the New Leaf blog again, kids.  I think I may have something more personal to say on the subject here, probably tomorrow.  But in the mean time.... take a peek over here.

I can picture the scene in my parents house right now, and I long to be there.  I can see the clear late-morning fall light in the kitchen, (though I'm sure my dad will insist on turning on the completely unnecessary overhead light), smell the coffee, hear the muffled sounds of the parade on TV (though it's just as likely that the TV is muted and the radio is on.)  If I were home now, I would be making a pie crust while my mom does an acrostic and my dad reads the paper.  I would be (reluctantly) setting the table, even though we won't eat for another 6 hours.  I would be fighting with my dad's treadmill, which never wants to go faster than 4.5 miles an hour.  I would probably be missing Chicago.

The ruthless combination of airfare and pride conspire to keep me in Chicago, where a dear friend's family is adopting me for the day.  And much as I wish I were in Brookeville, MD this morning, I am grateful for many things about the life I am building here. 

So, in no particular order, I am thankful for

• my "awethommme" nephew Charlie, who thinks half my sister's shoes are "Mahsha's."
• my family, whose support I take for granted
• New Leaf, my urban family, my friends, my collaborators, who bring out the best and the worst in me and love me because and in spite of it
• Six Years - for the experience of telling that story, of inhabiting that world, of meeting and knowing and loving my fellow actors, of being a part of an something extraordinary for the last 3 months
• FWIA, whose various accomplishments awe and inspire me, and whose enduring friendship is miraculous and essential
• Fiona MacBook
• the fact of my job, if not the job itself
• Fourth
• Barack Obama, for hope, for the belief that change is actually possible
• The sometimes stormy waters of a sea change
• Bakerloo, my summer home, my extended family

Looking over this list, it seems like the tip of the iceberg, or the shadow on the cave wall barely showing the idea of what I really mean.  I love words, but sometimes they are inadequate, and the more I try to nail something down with them, the smaller the thing becomes (which is probably why I am an actor....) 

This poem has been running through my head today.  It's probably more appropriate for spring, but it does a better job of capturing what I mean than the list I just made.  Sort of: 

Happy Thanksgiving!

And this one's about soup, which is great because it is cold out and I'm hungry. 

www.newleaftheatre.org/blog/2008/in-the-thick-of-it/

All of my best blogging is on the New Leaf blog.  It's true.  I admit it. And I can't seem to link directly to my last post, but here's the blog itself. 

Ready? Let's begin.  Again.

I am still trying to wrap my head and heart around what happened last night. To say it was an amazing experience is an oversimplified understatement.

( I was there. )