Well, THAT Was Fun!!!!!!

Feeling much better now.  THANK YOU for all your support!  It really means the world!

  It has been suggested, by folks wiser than I, that a gluten sensitivity can often be a cause of depression, particularly long-term, low-grade depression like mine.  So I'm spending 2 weeks utterly GF, and seeing how I feel.  It's PMS time, so if it works, that'd be somethin', eh?

I think I'm also feeling restless.  Coming out of the (mostly) stay-at-home-mom cocoon and not knowing exactly which end is up. And realizing that, as much as I enjoyed them at the time, the teaching jobs I had (Pilates, then theater for young 'uns) are NOT meant to be my life's work.  It's most likely true that, at this point, raising my kids IS my life's work, and my creative stuff is my side job.  Which is fine.  As long as I actually get to DO creative stuff.
Short films. A solo stage show written by ME. Performing in other peoples' shows again. Short stories.  Maybe a novel. Bass player for the Rolling Stones (If I ever actually learn to play bass).  Who the heck knows?

I'm trying to look at this time as a re-awakening. I also watched an interview with someone whom i greatly admire, and he was saying that it took him until his 40th year to realize that the way to succeed in his creative life was to be himself, and not try to fit into any cookie-cutter mold.  And when he did that, guess what happened?  His career started taking off!  Yes, there were peaks and valleys, but he's now playing his dream role.

So what did I get out of that?  Well, another light bulb went off.  When I started grad school, I'd been working professionally for 3 years and had built up my confidence.  To the point where I actually started assuming I'd get pretty much every role I auditioned for.  It wasn't ego, really, it was just that I focused on the work rather than on trying to impress or please anyone.   By the time I FINISHED grad school, all that had disappeared.  Because I once again started wanting to please my instructors.  That became more important than doing my job and telling the story of whichever show I happened to be in at the time.  Ironic, yes?  Because if pleasing others was my focus, the best way to do that would've been to, well, do my job and tell the story!  But I got caught up in the minutiae, trying so hard to do everything RIGHT, that the bigger picture, the whole, got lost.
Then I moved to L.A. and, while I got some of my performing confidence back, I got caught up in body image issues again.  I honestly believed I didn't DESERVE to work because I wasn't attractive enough. Beliefs helped along by the industry, of course.  And I'm sorry for repeating myself here, but I'm still discovering just how deep and insidious these beliefs are.

It's time for me to put down the cookie cutters and find my own voice again.  I tell my students that what they bring to the table is ALWAYS more interesting than any persona they try to put on.  Why don't I take my own advice?  Oh right, it's a lot easier to dish it out to other people.  :)

I think I'm at a pretty interesting, juicy time of life right now.  I've lived a bit, I've experienced a lot, and I certainly know more now than I did 20 years ago.  I may not have the unlined skin, perky boobs and high metabolism I had then, but I also don't have the same crippling insecurities, fear, and self-consciousness, either.  I think I have something to say, and I think it's something that is interesting and that people can relate to.

There's a great quote from "The Velveteen Rabbit":  The rabbit asks the Skin Horse what it means to be real: "Generally, by the time you are real, most of your skin has been loved off, and your eyes drop out, and you get loose in the joints, and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

I get it now.