Last week, I helped open a show up at Maui Preparatory Academy here on Maui (hence, no blog). There were a lot of things about that show that just didn't seem to want to go right, from venue to equipment failure to sickness that kept popping up through the young (and very affectionate) cast. To keep myself from going insane, I had to focus my emotions on the things that we had no control over that were going right while giving my attention to the things going wrong. "How lucky we are to be dry right now" became a mantra, one that was half a joke and half serious. At one point, in a room full of people who know their way around equipment, I was the one dealing in morale (a job I feel dramatically under qualified for). In the end, the show went up, and when the time came, we put it away. That part wasn't new, but my job as someone who was the happy one was.
This week, I started rehearsing for a new show, and already, it's asking things from me I've never done onstage. That being said, I can feel my attitude starting to shift toward enjoying the variables and the changes (not always, not all at once, but one by one). That being said, so far, I'm not being asked to do anything I've never done. I learned how to deliver those kinds of jokes offstage, hanging with friends. I already knew how to learn my music by listening (now, I just need to finish learning the words). In many ways, going into rehearsals has already been a chance to show what I've been practicing.
This post is a ramble, written about an hour after I was hoping to be asleep. I won't always write good posts, or have good ideas. I will, though, if I keep practicing. I guess that's the idea - to keep plucking away at it, figuring it out, and learning how to make it work (it, in this case, being life). So far, it's been full of mistakes and learning and good times. I think all of it has gotten easier when I'm looking from the perspective of "practicing," from the perspective that there is figuring out left to do, and that today's task is tomorrow's skill set. In any case, I'm going to keep on going.