I woke up today feeling pensive. I often reflect upon my accomplishments over the course of the last three decades, and there is much for me to be thankful. I had the opportunity to run a theatre program most of my life, and I do believe I did a good job. I touched a lot of lives and gave them opportunity to believe in themselves. Then I begin to wonder if and why I am done directing theatre. 

I see distant colleagues doing more with professional theatre, and I wonder why I am not standing in line with them. Sometimes it hurts, but most of the time it leaves me feeling a yearning to be back in the director’s seat with new and fresh ideas. I just don’t know how to go about it and land an opportunity. I sometimes feel I have played out my welcome in regional theatre both on the high school and professional stage. If that might be the case, I need to find another outlet. I often think sometimes it might be this right here, telling all of you a story..

I think finding one’s self can be a huge task. In order to feel like we are worthy of those things we dream about, we have to believe in ourselves and take on those risks. I sometimes wonder if it is something out of reach for me and I need to pursue something more attainable. Maybe I am done with the stage. The piece that keeps coming back to me is did I end too soon? Was I forced to end my theatre career sooner than I desired? There begins the question and evaluation of myself, my every waking hour.

I think it is important to like ourselves and let us be confident about our abilities. I ended my teaching career early because I couldn’t just enjoy my passion with the stage. I had to retire from my classroom, and rather than stay on with theatre, I left my district altogether. It was a smart move on my part, because my state of mind was under duress. A lot happened in that same year. I resigned from teaching English, stepped away from my theatre program, all while my marriage fell apart. Sounds like a Sunday night movie of the week, or a Hallmark tragedy. When in truth, it was just life playing itself out, much like it is right now while I write.

Discovering what lets me grow is a challenge. I’ve been down a lot of roads in my life, and there are a lot of reasons why I have lived out my days the way I have. When I’m writing this right now, I just feel like talking for a while and hopefully hitting on some of those touch points I carry with me every day.

I think life lets us explore all of our possibilities, if we allow ourselves to experience the many levels of our human condition. Mine is such that I can reach back into my adolescence and feel myself walk into a study hall when I was in high school, and as I entered I tried to sustain a sneeze and created a bleating sound that raised every eye from the table. I skipped that study hall the rest of the semester. I could call that an emotional scar, and my takeaway is that in all seriousness, that is material for me to explore in my writing. How I get there is the challenge.

So that sub-conscious nature I woke with today still remains, and has manifested itself through all of my activities. I’m looking at my dog on the couch right now, watching me with her eyes, wondering when I’m going to go to bed. And I realize this is my life, and I’m going to continue to figure out ways to write about it. The holidays are upon us, so there are plenty of tokens to unwrap in the coming weeks.