Innocent and Ignorant Are Not the Same Thing

I'm sitting at home, making a roast chicken dinner. This should calm me, but instead I'm sitting here obsessing over the fact that I may have just made a huge fool of myself on this blog.

I've since edited the offending post, but originally in my "Emerging" post I mentioned some people by name, as well as some of my musings or observations of them. I wasn't meaning any of that to be rude or disrespectful, but it also never occurred to me that when I mention people by name, my blog is only a Google-click away.

I feel like such a fool. Nothing that I wrote was a particular secret - I chatted about all of what I wrote with my friends at one point or another, and I knew that most of them could read it anyway - but upon reflection I see how what I wrote could be seen as insulting or just plain rude.

That's the worst of it for me. I have just put myself out there (semi-anonymously) as this completely rude person when I really didn't mean it that way.

I feel like a toddler, too, just learning that my observations and thoughts on people that I genuinely liked when I met them have potential to hurt them and myself. I tell myself that I should have learned this when I was 3. Really, girl, think about what you say before you shake out your writing fingers next time, I scold.

Then I have to take a deep breath and remember to forgive myself and let go. And I realize that my knee-jerk impulse to just never show my face in the theatre scene again is probably a bit of an overreaction. I've done all I can to rectify the situation, there's nothing else I can do.

Let's just hope I've learned something from this and that it never, ever, EVER happens again.

Heart Attack

It never occured to me that people could find my blog if I mentioned them, simply by googling themselves.

A wake up call and a heart attack rolled into one. Thank God the fellow who told me this was kind about it.

Emerging

Emerge. This is an event organized for all of the graduating acting students in Alberta to come and have an emerging audition for all of the artistic directors and freelance directors and theatre companies in Alberta. It’s a whole day of audition after audition, shown in four minute chunks divided by a bell if you go over time. Every student goes to Edmonton and Calgary, to two different groups of AD’s and theatre companies, with the same two pieces.

My class just finished this event. I thought we all did really well in Edmonton and even better in Calgary. Both days were long, though - leaving home at 8:00 and not getting back until late in the evening, all for an audition that flew by and a chance to schmooze with people after the day was over. We sipped glasses of complimentary wine and snacked on cheese and fruit and stood around.

I hate schmoozing. It seems pointless to me. Isn’t it too obvious that what I want from you is a job? Doesn’t this feel like I have an agenda in speaking to you? How can anything sincere come out of this? I feel dirty and gross and it’s an integral part of the career I’ve chosen.

I don't think I did too well in Edmonton, but I think I was better prepared in Calgary. Plus the wine and cheese thing in Calgary was just more friendly in atmosphere and environement, being held in a lovely venue.

At both events S. gets told that he did good work but is probably going to have to take out his piercing. A lady who knows one of my friends comes over and tells us that we all rushed our transitions between pieces but that we kicked ass – “Rosebud always does”. Someone else tells us that we were exceptionally clear. Some people don't talk to us at all.

Nothing gets reinforced to me except that everything is relative and I really can’t take what people say seriously in this career.

This is the stupidest line of work a person can possibly pursue. But I can't deny my heart and so I keep moving forward, which I guess is all I can do.

Tagged

I tagged myself from Hope's blog when I had the flu and almost forgot about it entirely.

1. The rules of the game get posted at the beginning.

2. Each player answers the questions about themselves.

3. At the end of the post, the player then tags 5 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know they’ve been tagged and asking them to read your blog. This last one might not happen since I don't think I know five bloggers - so tag yourselves. I'm changing the rules.

1)What was I doing 10 yrs ago?

I was 14, so I was doing some school and spending vast amounts of time outside playing and taking care of animals. It was a good life.

2) What are 5 things on my to-do list for today (not in any particular order):

I need to phone my old music teacher and ask about a mini-disc recorder, so that I can record some stuff for my mom who is making a radio documentary for Outfront.

I have to remember to email rehearsal reports before rehearsal this evening for L.'s final project.
Other than that, my day is my own.

3) Snacks I enjoy:

Tostitos with hot, hot salsa; Stoned Wheat Thins with either pickles (Vlasic, the pickles that sound so great) or dark chocolate; chocolate in any form. Sometimes fruit.

4) Things I would do if I were a billionaire:

I would pay all of my friends student loans, and my own, and create a few really great scholarships for this place, and then I think I'd invest in a really good and practical hybrid car. I'd also build wells for every village in Africa that I could find. And, lets face it, I'd go clothes shopping. And I'd build or buy myself a house somewhere, but first I'd have to figure out where I want to live.

5) Three of my bad habits:

Living in the future or the past instead of the present; letting fear be my guide; swearing. I think I swear a little too much.

6) 5 places I have lived:

The Bailey House, where we had a lovely classic barn where the chickens would lay eggs in the floor of the loft and my brothers and I saw a green orb that was watching us with friendly curiosity; The Laverick House, where every spring our animals would double, triple, quadruple in number and we'd go on quiet hunts to find hidden nests of kittens and chicks; The Star House, where I had a room with a tiny window that was too high to jump out of anyway and I learned that I need more than one way out of my bedroom or I feel trapped; The Dahlen House, where I had many, many late night hallway talks with my best friends; This house, where I am happy.

7) 5 jobs I have had:

I've been a librarian, a hostess at a restaurant, a janitor at a welding shop (which was the worst job I've ever had for multiple reasons), a supervisor at A&W, and in a month I'll be working at a coal mine. Should be fun!

8) 5 peeps I wanna know more about:

My love, S.; my friends, R. and L. and T.; my roommate J. And myself, but that makes six.

Just a Quick Note...

...to say that I went to Emerge, which is an audition that graduating acting students go to once in their life to present themselves as they emerge into the acting scene to all the theatre companies in Alberta who care to attend (85 this year), and I not only survived, I feel I did pretty well.

Yeay!

Now I'm off to rehearsal for Craving, a show I'm in that goes up in May at Fire Exit Theatre in Calgary. Hint, hint, plug, plug.

Pancake Theory Part II

I feel a need to explain the “Pancake Theory” post a little bit.

Last year, there was a young man here at the school. In the year that he was here he spent a lot of time with me and my friend R. I spent a lot of time listening to him in the first term, because he was crushing hard-core for R. and needed someone to talk to. After he talked to R. about how he felt (they never did go out) they spent more time together, and the three of us did dinner music together for a few months.

R. and I both counted him as a friend. Then he went home, just for the summer. We both heard from him once or twice. His only email to me did sound a bit strange – too chipper, too insistent that there were no problems between him and his parents which I thought was odd since I hadn’t thought there were problems and thus hadn’t said anything about it in my email to him. There was some scattered muttering about whether we would ever see him again – and then his father and uncle came into Rosebud and cleared out his room, leaving a typed, formal letter with the school that he wouldn’t be coming back to school in the fall.

This came out of the blue to some people and some nodded and said they’d seen it coming.

Since then, however, we haven’t heard a peep from this young man. Not a whisper, not a sign that he’s alive. He’s been deleted from Facebook, he vanished from MSN Messenger, and as far as anyone knew, emails were vanishing into cyber-space. If people phoned, his father would very curtly tell them that he wasn’t there and he wouldn’t offer to take a message. It fuelled the speculation, which went on for months – a long time considering he was only here a year. That should give you an idea of how much people liked this fellow and how odd it seemed that he just suddenly cut us all out of his life. It was very dramatic.

Some people in town (and I might add, these people are extremely sane people, who surprised me greatly with this train of thought) came up with a theory – they decided that this young man was being kept captive in his bedroom by his parents and being fed pancakes under the door.
I didn’t completely buy into the theory, but I did think about tracking him down in person, or phoning the police in his hometown and reporting a missing person, but with some thought I dismissed it as too extreme.

Or was it? [The suspenseful music begins here.]

I continued to email this young man, without expecting a response, just because I cared about him and wanted him to know what was going on in my life. In my last email to him I felt a compulsion to give him my blog address, so I did.

And he left a comment on this very blog! He refers to himself as a dinner music partner, and since only two of my dinner music partners know of my blog (him and R.) and R. didn’t leave that post (I asked her) it must have been him. I was very excited to hear from him, but even so didn’t want to pressure him into correspondence or anything.

(In case that comment gets deleted, I’ve retyped it here:

Your a very interesting person R. I never knew there was so much going on inside of that head of yours. May the Holy Spirit bless you with his riches and may he really make himself known to you. He's still living you know. All of the things written of in Acts still happen today. I love you with the love of the Lord. He loves you with such a love, oh wow it's powerful.
A certain Dinner Music Partner
Beloved Marriage

I have no idea what the "Beloved Marriage" comment means, unless he's being forced into an arranged marriage of some sort and this is his last cry for help.)

Anyway, I waited a little while and then sent him another email.

This was instantly bounced back to me, because his email address is suddenly permanently not available. So I’ve either been super-blocked or he’s deleted his email address.

Or his parents have.

It just doesn’t make sense to me. Why, after almost a year of emailing him, would he suddenly decide to block me now? And why block me after finally contacting me? And why was his message to me so bizarre?

I’m back to the pancake theory, people. I’m back to the pancake theory.


(Although, as S. had great fun pointing out last night, he could also be fed cheese slices, pizza, pitas, peanut butter on a playing card, ice cream mashed under the door – he went on for quite a while, until I explained that “Pancake Theory” has a much better ring than “Pancake/Pita/Pizza/Cheese Slices/Peanut Butter on a Playing Card/Mushy Ice cream Theory”. And it does.)