I knowI said I wasn’t going to announce this stuff any more, but Heather and I went to Thursday night’s taping of “Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!” (she had free tickets), and I wrote a bit about it on Chicagosity. It was fun, it was hilarious, it was a lovely evening. See? My life here isn’t completely awful.
Anyway, you can download the podcast to listen after 2pm EDT today, or you can hear it this weekend on your local NPR station. You should be able to hear my laugh. We were sitting right in front of one of the audience mics. And we laughed a LOT.

WARNING: This post is depressing. Really depressing. Do not read this if you’re going to worry. I am not looking for worry, or for sympathy. I will be FINE. I promised myself years ago that I would not try to hide myself here, that this would be a place for self-revelation and exploration because it’s the only way I could keep blogging. I haven’t posted here lately because I haven’t wanted to ALSO have to deal with the guilt of making people worry about me, along with all of the other emotional issues I’m facing. That would be one more thing on the huge pile I’m suffocating under, and I don’t want that. So. If you’re going to worry about me, Don’t. Read. Any. Further. The topic of this post is something I’ve needed to address, and I want to do it here, to just send it out into the world. I don’t think I’ll be able to blog again if I don’t write about it. Because I’ve discovered that I can’t write about anything at all–or even create anything at all–while I’m avoiding this.
I just cannot motivate myself to do anything:
I started a new painting. I can’t figure out how to finish it.
I watched five episodes of House yesterday.
I need to finish a gift for a friend, but I keep coming up with reasons to not go to the store to get the materials I need.
I’ve been eating like shit.
I haven’t been leaving the apartment unless I need to keep a commitment.
I have a multitude of projects I could be working on. I’m not.
I applied for ONE job this week. One.
The dishes are still getting done. The cats are still being cared for. The bathroom and kitchen and laundry are clean, and I did pick up all of the clutter in the hallway. I have to assume this is avoidance behavior, but I’m not sure what it is I’m avoiding. (Besides vacuuming, I mean. I’m avoiding that like crazy. Not sure why, it would take about ten minutes.)
The weather, possibly. Given how nasty it was outside yesterday, my lack of interest in leaving the dry, not windy apartment is understandable. But I could have been doing so many things that I enjoy doing, and instead, I sat like a lump at the computer all day and did very little that could be considered productive.
So. What am I avoiding/running from?
Well, I’m worried about the cats. Imogen is now getting weekly fluids. And we just upped Katala’s fluids to twice a week. And while they are both doing well, very well, even, it’s a constant reminder that I’m going to lose at least one of them sooner rather than later. So I’m spending time sitting in this chair because one or both of them is in it with me and I don’t know how many more moments of that I’ll have. (Like this one right now. Katala is snuggled in between me and the back of the chair. She’s warm, she’s purring. It’s lovely. A little weird, but lovely.)
I’m scared that I won’t be able to compete in the theatre scene here. Which is silly. Based on what I’ve seen so far, I can easily do the same level as what seems to be the norm in Chicago. But the fear that always comes with acting is still there. Because I can’t really measure the quality of my own work. What if I’m wrong? What if I’m just being blind and egotistical and I’m about to be in for a very rude awakening?
And to go along with that, what if I never get to teach again? What if I left a job I love to move on to a “better place,” only, it isn’t? What if I can’t ever convince people that I really am very, very good at it?
Speaking of work, what if I never get another job? What if I really was just a big fish in a small pond? What if I’m not as competetive as I think I am? And how will we survive if I can’t bring in any money?
Also, what if I spend all this time creating stuff, working on art and it doesn’t sell?
Mind you, I can’t get anywhere in terms of either proving or disproving any of these fears if I don’t get off my ass and try. Right now, though, I’m paralyzed. And because I haven’t wanted to be negative here (because the people who love me will worry, and I don’t want them to worry about me any more than they already do–WHICH IS EXCESSIVELY, Mom, Dad, Dave), I’ve avoided posting here as well. I’ve also avoided posting because I’d be saying the same things daily. No job. No acting gigs. No teaching gigs. I’m scared. I’m lonely. And you know what? That’s really boring to read. At some point, if you keep reading variations on the same depressing theme, you want to reach through the internet and slap the person writing it and say, “THEN FIX IT ALREADY!”
Or maybe that’s just me.
I had such grand plans. But the demons followed me here. I should have known this would happen. I haven’t had the time to do much self work over the past several years. I’ve been too, too busy. So now I guess I get to do that. Maybe all the rest will start to come together if I focus on the things I have been able to/had to set aside since I started graduate school. Maybe that’s where I need to begin. I have the time right now, maybe I should take it.
The stupid part is that I like this city very much. There’s so much opportunity. For everything. So much to explore, so much to try. If I just started to go for things, I think I’d get them. And I have friends here. A community here, already. That’s so wonderful. I would be completely at sea if it weren’t for Heather and Becca. And all of the people here who are welcoming me in as we get to know each other. Isabel. The people at Eclipse. The people involved with Democracy (which is the show I’m doing dialect coaching for). The UI alums: Chris and Jared and Azar and Sarah and Jon. The Puget Sound alums. And, frankly, the friendly strangers I meet everywhere here. So many lovely human beings. Maybe I just need to relearn how to be one of them.
The sun’s out. Maybe the first thing I need to do is go for a walk.

Gah!
It seemed like everything I did today ended up with some kind of mess attached. From the dropped (and broken) bottle of laundry detergent on the top landing (and the landing below) to the burst bag of rainwater and clumped cat litter on my porch (and the two porches below), to the 6pm meeting I didn’t realize I had today and only learned about when I got to rehearsal at 6:40 (for the 7:00 runthrough), it was just a difficult day.
Things didn’t dry fully in the dryer.
The bathtub drain didn’t unclog well.
I poured the eggs into the frying pan before the veggies that needed sauteeing.
Frankly, it’s a wonder the train didn’t derail as soon as I stepped on it. It was just one of those days when everything exploded when I touched it. Every task I began was harder than it needed to be. So that cleaning the house took all. damn. day, when it’s usually a three hour job. And I still haven’t vacuumed the floors. Ah, well, at least the laundry is done. The vacuuming and mopping can wait until tomorrow evening.
It’s time for bed.

Not sure what I was doing last week. Worrying about Imogen, mostly, I think. Along with worrying about not having a job. And not sleeping. Made for a rather zombie-like existence and an inability to focus for extended periods of time. I’m a bit better now.
For instance, I’ve actually accomplished things today. Grocery shopping, baking. I cleaned off my desk and sorted and put away/recycled everything that was cluttering it up. I updated my calendar with all of the things I’d like to attend, as well as rehearsal days and museum free days, so I don’t have to dig for the right piece of paper every time I want to do something, only to find that it was last week or yesterday. (Like the cheap papermaking class I wanted to attend this weekend which was full by the time I remembered to call and register for it.)
I don’t know, really, how much of my reluctance to do art and to post here or on Chicagosity or even Twitter was a result of the above-mentioned stressors, and how much was burnout. Because quite frankly, I had been going pretty much without stopping for over 12 months.
Seriously. We got back from Hawaii on August 22, 2009. Because we were on airplanes all day, I’m going to count that as the first day of my crazy year plus. Since then, I have been in three productions, done voice and/or text coaching on three productions (one of which I was also in), taught four classes, helped put together a major jazz festival and moved three cats and half my belongings 1800 miles. I have settled into a new city and begun a job hunt. I thought several times in the past year (including last weekend) that I was going to lose a cat. We did actually lose one a year ago last week. I have made multiple books and a trip to Minneapolis. And always, always, I have had something more that Must Be Done dangling in front of me. If it wasn’t school, it was lines and rehearsal. If it wasn’t that, it was packing. If the packing was done, there was cleaning or traveling or unpacking. And now there’s job-finding. If it feels like it never ends, perhaps that’s because for the last 14 months, it hasn’t.
In the summer of 2008, I took three glorious trips, during which time I didn’t have to do anything. Or worry about anything. Six months before that, I had ten incredible days in London where the same thing was true. The last half of 2008, however, and the entirety of 2009 so far, have been ball busters. Oh how I long to get settled into a routine, with money coming in so I don’t have to worry about that (as much) any more. It’s funny how more of the same as last year is what I’m wishing for now. Probably because this time off isn’t really.
That’s what made those trips in 2007 and 2008 so wonderful. They were time off. They were guilt-free. I had the rest of my life lined up and figured out (as in the other parts of it, not as in the future). I had work figured out and planned for the future. I had, as far as I knew, four healthy animals. So I could take the time off and truly not worry about anything except whether to have a mudslide or another mai tai. Or where I would have dinner. Or which paper would work best with which bookbinding fabric.
Now, I’m just a stress monkey. I have so many worries, and they never seem to end.
So maybe that’s what last week was all about. I had reached my ultimate stress level (so far) and Could. Not. Cope. And so I unplugged, tuned out, turned off and disconnected from pretty much everything. I read books and watched stupid tv and frittered my time away. That is, when I wasn’t worrying about Imogen (who really is fine, now). Maybe I was hibernating, coccooning, burrowing underground for a bit of a rest. I know I do that sometimes, when things have been overwhelming for too long. Perhaps that’s what happened last week.
Now the cats are all better (so far as I know), and I don’t have that worry, so I can breathe a bit more easily and focus on things instead of checking on Imogen every ten minutes. Dave and I have worked out a better daily phone call schedule so I can get a full night’s sleep again. (He was calling after rehearsal, which meant about 12:30 my time, and while I loved hearing about his entire day, it meant I wasn’t getting to sleep until 1am or later but still getting up at 7:30 or 8am. Yawn.) With those two things resolved/adjusted, I may be able to handle the rest of my life. Given how much I got done today, I’d say there’s a very good chance that’s the case.

On Thursday morning, I woke up, stumbled out of the bedroom and down the hall to the kitchen, where I fed the cats. Then I stumbled into the dining room where I sat to eat breakfast and try to get something done. The dining room is my workspace. Three large windows cover one wall, and my desk is in front of those windows. I look into a tree which is still full of green leaves.
Which is why I was not prepared for what I saw when I headed back down the hall to the bedroom for something (probably warm socks).

Apparently, autumn hit Chicago on Wednesday night.
I was dazzled by the gold. Dazzled enough that I ran to get the camera, to try to capture the colors and the brilliance of the light. And yes, that contrast of light to dark is just about right. There was that much difference between inside and outside.
This is the view again, only with interior lighting dimming the glow somewhat.

My living room is a cozy space.
It might seem surprising that I missed this vision earlier in the morning, but let me explain. my room is next door to the living room. They face the same direction. So when I headed out of the bedroom, my back was to the living room. There was no reason at all for me to turn around and go back the other way. And even if I were to head to the bathroom, a kink in the hallway means the living room windows aren’t visible on the trek from dining room to bathroom.
Also, the tree I’d been facing all morning had tons of green leaves on it. How was I to know that on the other side of the house, everything was completely different?
It reminds me of a sign I posted next to my office door at the University of Idaho, I don’t remember where I got it.

Here’s a little trick on how to change
the scenery in your life, radically, fantastically,
and perhaps, forever.
(If that’s what you really want).
Look the other way.