14 Days (or how I learned to love blogging and all the neuroses that it dissipates)

Hypocrisy is (according to Wikipedia - my source of all pseudo-knowledge) the act of pretending to have beliefs, opinions, virtues, feelings, qualities, or standards that one does not actually have.

Sami is a hypocrite.

I spend the better part of my days teaching prospective actors about all the beauty and talent that is within them. I show them ways to work past the fear and doubt that only serves to crowd out their creative genius. I scold (lovingly) and reprimand them (teasingly) for any cases of i-suck-itis that they might have developed.

And then I spend a ridiculous amount of my own time wallowing in fear and self-doubt.

And that, my dear beautiful and talented friends, is hypocrisy. And I should be ashamed of myself. I AM ashamed of myself and yet I struggle with that fear and self-doubt almost as often as I struggle to get my children to mind me. My psyche and the 2-year-old have a lot more in common than just runny noses.

The beauty of this blog (or any form of journaling – public or otherwise) is that I am confronted daily with the knowledge that my actions effect others and I have to be ever vigilant if I want that affect to be a positive one.

One of the beauties of my work is that I get to spend time with people new to the “business.” With people who are still giddy and enthusiastic enough to think the theatre is the Next Coming. People who have not been jaded. And I get to encourage and guide and act as an overgrown cheerleader.

How positive and effective a teacher can I be if I beat myself up for the very same things that I teach my “kids” are perfectly normal? Am I lying to them? Paying lip service to the methods I was taught not THAT many years ago? Is it all just wishful thinking?

Do I need a me?

As of yet, I have not found one (after many years of looking). What I have found is this. Writing daily about how my work effects my life and vice versa. Seeing the crazies on the “page” somehow makes the demons less frightening, the fears less insurmountable and the worries almost laughable. It allows me to take myself and my work just a little less seriously. It reminds me (as do my enthusiastic students) that what I do is SUPPOSED to be fun.

After all, they call it a PLAY for a reason.