Back to Butterfly.

In less than two weeks, I'll be performing in Butterfly in New York City.  Off-Broadway.

My head is spinning.

I'm trying not to think about what I'm thinking about.  All of it needs to sink into black oblivion and I just need to focus on the moment.

It's not as easy as it should be.

I'll be shaving my head again next Tuesday.  It will be back to the world of "sir" and "oh, I thought you were a boy".

I don't know how I feel about it.

It was liberating.  It was an awesome journey...  but that journey is over and I'm new and different on the other side.

But on we press.  And I'm a pretty masochistic actor.

The show is new and different.  The director/writer has a vision of continuity and art and beauty and surprise that will absolutely take the audience for a ride.

I'm focusing on the project.  It's a job.  I'm trying not to let the nervousness of the people around me rub off on me.  I turn within myself.  I remain aloof.

I think about the afterward and the food and the drinks and the companionship with other witty, talented, creative, intelligent women who I admire and love.

I think about driving into the city.

I think about walking down the street in the haze of New York heat and getting the feeling for the first time of being a working New York actor.

It's funny.

I have several friends and acquaintances from college and high school who are equity actors.  Several who are "making it".  Several who have appeared in movies and commercials and on and off Broadway in numerous capacities.

I have students who are working actors in the Big Apple.

My life didn't go that way.

I got married.  I had children.  I chose to teach.

I wrapped myself in the safety of my degree and the expectations of my friends and family and my lack of self-confidence and the theory that someday things would be different.

Life throws you boomerangs and bowling balls and Frisbees and arrows and you do your best to catch and dodge and toss them back. 

I throw around my artistic interests and have serious difficulty just choosing one.  Focusing.  I lose interest.  I get interrupted.  I get lost in reading instead of writing.  I think about my family and then I think about what certain things would do to them.

I look at my art studio and feel pangs of guilt.

I look at this trip to New York and feel pangs of guilt.

I wallow in it sometimes.

I swim and dive and wrap myself in guilt like I wrapped myself in fear before.

I realize this now.

On Tuesday...as my hair falls pell mell into the bathtub I will imagine the guilt there with it.  Sitting and waiting for me to wash it down the drain.  And I will do it.  And I will climb into the van to New York City with a coat that is just me.