Recalibrating...

what if it all works out?

I am doing fine, just fine.

Well, last night I woke up at 2am and experienced hypothetical dread about the future, ie. a familiar narrative - what if I never make real money and I lose everything I have and live out the rest of my days as an abject failure of sorts, blah, blah, blah…

So I had to be like, “it’s 2am, you don’t have to figure out the rest of your life right this second, you still have time, you are capable, go to bed” and then I guess I did go to bed.

The night before I had a dream about Rita.

In the dream, she was alive again, but she was alive in the way she was at the very end of her life, where she couldn’t even stand for a moment anymore without falling down and was clearly struggling. Because she hadn’t eaten anything since she died two months ago, her poop was just this endless clear gel.

Anyway, I’m fine.

Last week I had an “acting” gig. I was a plantiff on “Equal Justice with Eboni K. Williams.”

I got my make-up professionally done for what felt like the first time in my life.

I’ve decided that make-up makes me look old, honestly.

My character did not win. She didn’t have a strong case. I honestly was never on her side, which I guess is sort of bad acting on my part.¹

Why did I do this at all, you might ask? I did this because I genuinely have no idea what I’m doing anymore.

I took a clown class which led me to a little advertisement to be a litigant on a court TV show so I thought, “why not” and then they kept e-mailing me every week to see if I was available but I kept saying no because at the time my dog was dying, and then my dog died,² and then after the dust settled a little and I had nothing better to do I thought, “sure why not” so I sat in a room as a “stand-by litigant” for four hours where I was paid $20/hr to do nothing…³ and then the next week they called me in to be a plantiff.

At this point I am just doing miscellaneous side-quests and hanging out.

I suppose the greater hope is that if I keep throwing myself into random shit then one day I will stumble into an opportunity that alleviates the 2am fears I seem to have about never being financially independent.

I am trying to recalibrate… particularly where my “self-concept” is concerned.

I had a realization not too long ago that my baseline attitude is one of insecurity and doubt. I tend⁴ to search for my sense of power and belonging from approval and validation from the external world.

I feel ready to let go of all that.

I still miss Rita. If I look at pictures of her for too long I will break into tears and the grief will re-emerge. I’ve been trying to shield myself from that pain, but I’ve also been okay. My life is going on.

I keep wanting to move forward with a sense of blind faith that I can handle anything that comes my way. I want to know what it feels like to be genuinely confident.

Confidence, it seems, might be a matter of accepting failure and not taking anything personally.

One time I felt really sad that I will never be as funny as Martin Short, and I think that remains true.

I just watched the Martin Short documentary.

One thing I learned from him through this dedication to his life journey is something he said to John Mulaney, of all people, “98% of what we do is failure. That’s the job.”

Martin Short also said, “the experience you can have in your soul is the experience of doing it. Was it creative? Was it fun? Did you have fun dinners? Was the hang good?”

Amen. I want to be less attached. I want to just have fun dinners and good hangs. I want to keep doing my little side-quests with less of a need for them to amount to something and prove something about myself.

I hope that in the process I’ll find that everything will be okay.

Because I wonder what my life would be like if I could recalibrate to become the person who believes everything will be okay, somehow, someway, despite the odds, not in spite of my failures, but because I am finally embracing them.

1. I had an acting teacher once tell me you always have to empathize with your character, even though the few times I get cast in something I seem to get cast as a sort of white girl I can’t really abide by.

2. see above

3. which, I’d argue, is psychologically harder than doing something

4. as honestly most people probably do