juggling

i guess the toughest thing about life right now is the juggling act i perform with work, school, and leisure time. i’m still working full-time for the job i’ve had for the past three years. the money is great, but the work is pretty mentally taxing, especially in the fall, when, by some ridiculous decree from the powers that be, we have to send nearly all of our books to the printer in the space of a few weeks. pile my first full-time semester of school in 7 years and a 4-days-a-week commute to san marcos on top of all that, and there’s not much time for leisurely reading, movies, friends, or even cooking at home.

we had a big ol’ housewarming party at my new place saturday night, and other than the fact that somebody seems to have stolen my roommate’s hair iron (come ON, people), it was a success – a nice intermingling with a handful of distinct friend groups, tons of noise late into the night with no cops, and even a few dance jams. but i realized how tired and overworked i feel when i started to get impatient that people were still hanging out after 2. normally, i would’ve been rested and excited and happy (and i was all of those things, for a while), but the fact that i had to get up early the next day for a rehearsal and to hunt down a book at the UT library had me really stressed out and annoyed by 3 a.m. and who wants to be that guy, you know?

that said, i’m looking forward to being significantly poorer moneywise, but richer time-wise, early next year. i’ve got a lot on my plate, but i’m reading tons of new-to-me plays and learning lots, and treasuring every moment i get with my friends – and loving every moment of sleep even more, ha ha.

i’ve also got a lot on my mind regarding my future plans, but that’s a discussion for another day.

week three

i’ve been in grad school about three weeks! and i’m not ready to quit – a good sign, i think.

things have been tough, though. i’ve been forced to let go of one of the people i love most – not entirely, but in a big enough way that i’ve really been struggling to accept what’s happening. in short, the guy who has been my boyfriend for the past seven months (and who was, and is, one of the most important people in my life this first year in austin) split with me. he’s got a lot of sorting out to do, and if you know us and want more details, you’ll have to be nosy in person. let’s just say i was very upset and confused at first, and am working hard to accept and appreciate this change. we’re still friends, and i think we’ll remain close always (i hope!), and i am trying to trust that his reasoning is sound. i was reluctant to make a public post about this, but i’m trying to strike a balance between my personal life and my ‘work’, as it were. and the two are so intertwined. i think that’s inevitable when you’re passionate about what you do – and that’s the aim of my gradual move away from the publishing world and back toward my first love, theatre. and i know myself – i NEED to get this stuff out. so i’ll do my best to share thoughts here (and of course, i keep other writing to myself) without embarassing or hurting the people in my life. and gosh, my friends have been STELLAR this week – in person and via phone and e-mail. i am so lucky.

enough of that. things in general are good. i’m getting good marks in school early on, i find my classmates and professors intelligent, likable, and genuinely surprising (some fantastic actors, hilarious folks, and varying combinations of wise, kind, bubbly, fashionable, interesting people overall). i’ve chosen my thesis topic for my final paper for one class, am reading tons of plays and other writing (assigned and unassigned), and have been pushing myself to make connections between the academic (theatre history) and the creative (dramaturgy/directing/design/acting) – writing papers that will hopefully be useful for current theatre practitioners, reawakening my love of design, and pushing my own boundaries with attempts at directing and maybe, eventually, the first acting i’ve done in years.

and i like my new house – the settling in process is sloooow, but we have two cats, who spar and do strange things (the younger licks the older’s head as they fight – take that, sluuuurrrp!) to each other, and then harass me for food when i get up in the morning. my human roommates also rule, and i’m making an effort to give less of a shit about all the stuff that used to drive me crazy in my last place. i almost ruined a friendship, largely through my own uptight behavior and weird double-standards (i’m a total slob, but i have a hard time tolerating that very behavior in others…wtf, dude?) and i don’t want to go there again. plus, i simply don’t have the mental energy for that kind of obsessing now – work, AND school? i’m drained enough that doing laundry and showering near-daily is challenge enough.

the last thing i did this week was submit an application to a new directors program run by a local theatre company. this is a group who totally bowled me over with a production this summer, and though i’m scared and think i may be too inexperienced, i’d love to work with them. the bad news is, i let myself go back to sleep and missed the application deadline by about an hour. i’m hoping they’ll kindly consider me anyway, though i wouldn’t blame them for just deleting my e-mail.

anyway. more later. off to read.

school

oh, hey, in case i forgot to mention it, i’m in grad school now. for real. working toward a master’s in theatre history and dramaturgy. it’s thrilling, my fellow classmates are a good bunch, and i’ll enjoy it all even more when i’m not working full time anymore.

and additionally, well, let’s just say, i knew living in texas would be an education of sorts. and it is, in the best way. couldn’t stay in that comfy little boston bubble forever (even if i do go back to it eventually).

mostly right now i’m curious whether i’ll end up being the only person who is really in to avant-garde theater. probably not, but i don’t really know anybody well enough to know where their interests lie.

Lemme Twitter that

While I feel a bit funny about the idea of a casting director tweeting about auditions as they’re happening, I sort of wish I could be part of a show called Gay Bride of Frankenstein. I mean, duh.

Acting is scary, and while I’m sure anyone who has been involved in a casting call has opinions on the auditions they see, I feel like the most professional way to handle the situation is to constrain one’s opinions to the other folks involved in the process. No need to say anything detailed (especially not anything mean, though I don’t think this was the case in the situation linked above) about the process to anybody else – and broadcasting it across the internet in real time seems especially reckless.

cycling in a hot, hot city

granted, austin isn’t phoenix, but this is the first week since early june that we haven’t hit 105 at least once. needless to say, going from boston to austin has been a pretty big adjustment, weather-wise. i love the sunshine, and like the warmth, but adjusting my lungs, water-drinking habits, and cycling ability to this tropical heat and steam has been interesting. at this point, i feel like i could bike five miles in just about any weather on the upper end of the heat/humidity spectrum. throw in cycling gloves for winter’s occasional chill, and i’m starting to look more like a real cyclist every day.

that said, i’m in the marked for a new bike. my steamroller is probably going to be my beloved beast forever – i added a back rack and two baskets: great for hauling the farm share and anything else i don’t want sitting on my back while i ride in aus(auna)tin, but significantly heavier and hardly a good choice for fast, long-distance riding. then add in the fact that i’ll be a student at texas state in september (they have a cycling club, and san marcos looks like a great town for biking), and i want something with, uh, gears. and no heavy utilitarian add-ons. frankly, i’d like to get up to 100+ miles of riding a week, with the potential for racing, too. i’m thinking of ebaying something like a specialized allez elite. (where am i going to find the money? hell, i have no idea.)

on a non-self-propelled note, i bought a car: an ‘09 honda fit, gets about 35 mpg on the highway. i’m not planning to drive much, but it’ll be nice to have that option for getting to san marcos, and of course, the occasional road trip. it’s got good cargo space for a bike.

late saturday night

even when i know i should be frugal, i can’t resist buying a new book or two. i’d been feeling the urge to wander a bookstore all week, and friday night, i ended up at bookpeople – essentially the only good bookstore in austin, as far as i can tell. wandering the fiction section, i paused in front of a paperback with an arresting cover. it had caught my attention before: a woodcut-looking image of a young girl, two braids, upturned eyes, looking mildly horrified, as if straining to see the word ’stories’ plopped in the middle of her forehead. promo quotes from salman rushdie (front cover) and yann martel (back) caught my interest. the book, the girl on the fridge by etgar keret. so far, it’s fabulous: incredibly short stories, infected with a magical realism that recalls murakami and marquez. delightful.

academic books

it’s actually satisfying to read ‘academic’ books that feel useful to me. as i sit around with my fingers and toes crossed, waiting to hear from the master’s program at texas state, i’ve been occupying a good chunk of my time with two books that are helping me get back into a more scholarly mode.

the first is the craft of research by booth, colomb, and williams. i pulled this off a list of recommended research reads on the yale university library website. it’s pretty solid, explaining in simple language every step involved in the creation of a research paper – from subject matter to final product. even the early bits, which felt a little basic, were a helpful refresher. as silly as i say telling people that i’m reading it, it has given me some ideas of how to improve my academic reading and writing processes.

relatedly, but more directly focused in my field, is david ball’s backwards and forwards: a technical manual for reading plays. as simplistic as its premise is, this thin volume is a straightforward explanation of how to read plays to get at the heart of their meaning. basically, it reminds you of the basic elements of a play and very clearly explains how observing those elements critically will help you translate the words to the stage in an effective way, while still leaving lots of room open for personal interpretations of the work.

today’s notebook (6/22)

started my day with some npr live concert podcasts. the first was a boston band called passion pit. they’re getting lots of buzz right now, but i don’t enjoy them. saw them play at the middle east downstairs, in cambridge, ma, last year. i just found them to be an unpleasant mash of too many synthesizers, and a singer who wanted to rock a falsetto, but doesn’t quite have the power or nuance to make it any fun at all. just not my thing, i suppose. and i just listened to the new single – very nicely produced, but still boring.

i quickly hopped over to an allen toussaint performance, and i’m totally blown away. i see marc ribot is on guitar for this (long-time tom waits collaborator and brilliant guitarist), and they just played ’st. james’ infirmary,’ an all-time favorite of mine.

central texas drought

when i moved to austin from boston last fall, i knew i was making a big change in a lot of ways, including climate-wise. boston varies wildly, with icy winters, wet, sloppy springtime, hot, buggy summers, and autumns marked by red-gold leaves and crisp, dry air.
austin, i knew, would be much hotter. i wasn’t likely to see more than the faintest traces of snow, but it’d probably be pretty pleasant biking all winter long. summers – stretching from may to almost october – would be hot, hot, hot, starting in the 80s and climbing the thermostat to rest around 100 degrees in august. winter coats would be a thing of the past, but so would frozen nights huddled in a drafty apartment. air conditioning would become a life-saver, and evenings would be cooler, and would find me on my bicycle in austin’s quiet nighttime streets.
what i didn’t realize was that i was moving to a part of the country that had been experiencing drought conditions for the past year. in fact, austin itself has been experiencing an extreme to exceptional (the two worst drought categories) drought since the day i rolled in to town last august. it shows – june normally has an average high temperature of 91, but it’s been hitting 96-100 almost every day this month. normally, we’d get almost 4 inches of rain in June, but we’ve barely hit 6/10″ so far. The Austin American-Statesman has an interesting interactive drought map.

(incomplete notes)

rebirth

i’ve decided to change things up with this blog. i need to gather my ideas and store them somewhere more organized than my million scattered notebooks. so that’s going to happen here. sometimes it’ll be just like old times (music/film posts) but mostly not. hopefully it’ll still be interesting.