I've spent the better part of my life being impatient for things I don't have yet. This may be typical for people in their teens and twenties -- we think we should get the career and the money and the relationship, and then our adulthood will be established and we can spend the next sixty years living it out.
But I'm pushing 35 now, and these things are still in my future, if they're in the cards for me at all. Sometimes, I get antsy as hell. But being antsy doesn't really help. And at least in the career department, I've already been there, done that as far as picking one goal and focusing all my energies on it (music, in case you weren't paying attention for the preceding 334 posts). I'm now trying to learn how to function without a detailed plan, without prematurely committing to any one endeavor. My plan for the present is to not have a plan.
And it's hard to stick to! It takes a kind of discipline not to fall into my previously established forms of discipline. This is part of what I'm running into with improv. At this point, having graduated from this theater's training center and being on student performing teams, I find myself around plenty of other people who take the pursuit seriously. They're trained actors or stand-up comedians and on track to do improv professionally. I can see who the most gifted performers are, and look up to them and want to be a part of them like they're the cool kids at school.
In each activity you pursue, you're likely to encounter people who have made that their world. Not that they have no other interests; but we each have some "core worlds" we're a part of. Now that you're involved in this activity, do you want it to become one of your handful of core worlds, or do you want to hang on the periphery? You can only be a part of so many things, and you can be seriously dedicated to even fewer.
My family, my roommates, and my church are three core worlds for me. Music used to be one. Work, tellingly, is not -- though I spend a lot of time and mental energy there, it does not hold my heart. I could choose to become ever more a part of the improv world, and let that be my primary creative outlet. And it could be fine. But I haven't done all the exploring I need to do, so in spite of my creative serial monogamy, I think I need to tear myself away and dabble in a few other worlds. Yeah, there's the desire to have my evenings and weekends free and curl up with a candle and a book at home. But there's also the desire to do Shakespeare and dance and sing in musicals.
And darn it, all this exploring takes time! Yargh! I thought I'd have my ducks in a row ten years ago, but ducks are stubborn. And lines are probably overrated anyway. So here I am, almost old enough to be president (we all know the age requirement was the only thing standing in my way, right?), and I'm still trying to figure out what I want to do without prematurely putting down creative roots. (Oh my gosh, do you know what this means? I'm sowing my wild oats, artistically! Who knew I had wild oats?) I'm almost as old as Mozart was when he died, and I've barely begun to show the world what I have to offer. Heck, I hardly know what I have to offer. Yet this is a process that can't be rushed, like pregnancy or reaching your adult height. So as tempted as I am to settle into something so that I can say, "This is what I do, and this is my plan to become successful at it," I know that I did that once before. I'm having to unlearn it!
I'm trying to remember that taking my time is how this process will work best for me.
It's just that it feels so much like waiting.
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