You Should Be Happy

On paper I am living the dream. Like, literally. I dreamed of performing at the _______ theatre since I was twelve years old. And yesterday, I did.

You should be happy. This is what it is all about. But I couldn't have known when I was coming back from that summer mainstage on a school bus fulla kids who got most of the jokes but not all of the jokes that when it happened, when it really happened, it would be at the end of the longest week ever. The week I was sick to the bone. All my parts heaving and mucus, a clogged ear and too much lost lunch. I don't get paid enough to lose that much lunch, I thought while I was yakking in the bathroom on the floor above my classroom. I didn't want one of my students to see me wipe the slop off my face. It has been a shut-down week. Too tired to even respond to text messages week, certainly too tired to write, half-functioning just enough to sludge to the bus stop and cradle the stacks of copy-machine minted syllabi up the escalator.

You should be happy to have this job even though you need another if you want to do anything besides pay your rent this semester. You have to buy your own dry erase markers. Adjuncts are only administered two per semester, and yours haven't arrived yet anyway. Meanwhile there are all these new papers with all these moldy sentences and all these fresh faces who deserve a good education.

The show was okay. Just okay. We've all done so much better. But it was late and actually stunningly non-magic considering dreams and such were coming true. I walk out the doors of the best comedy theatre in the world, get in the car, snatch a chunk of toilet paper, blow my nose. This is the way it ends.

This is what dreams are for? To arrive at. To see the next mile post down the highway. "Maybe once I am there," you think.

Right Right, Sure Sure

I wonder where the impulse to be right comes from. I suppose there are a lot of possibilities, and I would assume they vary person to person. There may be people who truly don't care if they are right or not, but I'm having trouble thinking of any.

We all have that memory of the time we fought a little too hard for something we were a little less than half sure was right. And yet, something compelled us to do it. Is it a power thing? The need to be respected? Why did you need to be the expert about what Alec Baldwin said in that one interview all of the sudden? What made you do that?

For me (I think) it's mostly the need to validate my memory. I used to have a flawless one. It's a little hazier now, which is kind of nice, because I shrug a lot more and am like, "Yeah, okay, could be, idk, pass the Oreos?"But when I know what I know, it seems wrong to not do what I can to make the truth heard. No matter how dumb it is?

I've mentioned the mantra of my favorite college nomad Stripes: "Do you love yourself enough to be more happy than right?" There's a lot of healing in that. Sometimes, just be what you are, and make what you are happy. Yet, Right can't fly out the window.

You know, people used to be wrong and not know it forever. Pre-smartphones. "When did Good Will Hunting win the Oscar?" "1999." "That's way too late. It was '97 or earlier." "No, it never won the Oscar." "Huh, well, I don't know. Wanna call someone and ask?" "No, you idiot, we're playing basketball, and that's way more fun that trivia minutia. SLAM DUUUNK."

Maybe this new possibility of fact-finding will breed people who learn not to fight as hard because facts are in pockets. So that could be nice.

Anti-Sloth!

My sister sort of harps on this idea of sloth from time to time that I'll paraphrase here:
We all think sloth means being lazy like not working or sleeping a lot, but it means a lot more. There's mental sloth. There's knowing you don't like your job and not trying to change it. Or not telling the friend the thing they should know. Or not finishing that thought you had about why or why not you thought the film was good. Even in your own head.

Perhaps because I am moving and have a forced sense of freedom, or perhaps because I'm out of school for the first time in two decades or just because this season of Breaking Bad has been very good and Dunkin has an iced coffee for 99 cents deal on, but lately I have been doing things I want to do. Case in point--the waterpark on Friday. But there has been so much more. I get bored with sorting papers, so I read. Or I mention wanting to experience The Rainforest Cafe as an adult half-jokingly and Bisque takes me on a date there for volcano cake. At summer camp I love playing Mafia with kiddos, so why not get a bunch of friends together on a Thursday and play, offering up the last beers in the fridge and the Thin Mints I have been saving in my freezer since January of last year. Any day can be a rainy day. In the good way I mean.

He tricked me into seeing Edge of Tomorrow after, but that's okay.

Mafia night in my living room.

It could be easier said than done, but oh well, just try.