[the Theater Break question]
A friend is hosting a discussion on her Facebook about what it means to take a break from theater. My story of how I came to my current hiatus was too long to post there, so I'm posting here and linking it there.
Sometime in 2013, I stopped taking on any theater gigs which involved my attending multiple weeknight rehearsals.
I should step back a little and talk about why I felt the need to stop doing anything.
I have a job. It's somewhere in between a day job and a vocation. I've held this job, with some internal variation, for 15 years, and so far nothing has come up that has caused me to want to quit it. There are things about the job I don't much like, but there are things about it I love, and, also, you know, I like being able to pay rent and eat and silly things like that. So. Job. Not losing job.
2013 was a watershed of two events: a piece of bad judgment on my part that damaged my relationship with my boss for a while, and a brand new computer system at work that offered me the chance to be really good at my job instead of using up all of my energy to flounder along using the outdated tools and patch jobs that had made up our last computer system. It was too good a chance to pass up, and also my boss had lost enough faith in my commitment to my job that I pretty much had to either step way up or start looking for another job.
So I stopped and looked at what else, apart from the crappy computer system, was preventing me from being really good at my job. And I went "...well, I'm not getting enough sleep, and when I'm at work there are always a million show-related e-mails and Gchats on stuff that can't wait, and it kind of sucks that I have to squish absolutely everything else in my life into the weekends because I leave the house every morning by 7:30 and don't get home until after 11, and I'm not really all that good at [stage managing, playing piano, Gilbert and Sullivan chorus work] but as long as I work really hard people will let me do it anyways but it still kind of sucks to know that I'm doing all this hard work on something that I'm still not going to do all that well and and and..."
And I contrasted the kind of time commitment and mental-processing commitment that theater required, with the kind of commitment that my participation in my two choir groups required. Vox Lucens, my Renaissance chamber choir, rehearses one night a week: I show up, I sing, I hang out and chat with my friends for a while, I go home, we do a couple of concerts per semester. The music we sing requires some practice outside of rehearsal, and my Vox experience is immeasurably improved by studying other music of the period and listening to recordings and working on the language, but all of that can be built in around my work schedule. The other choir group is the community-chorus arm of the Christmas Revels, which, again, one rehearsal once a week, a few concerts per semester, as much study time as I can fit in otherwise. And? I'm not a great singer, but I am okay. And being just an okay singer bothers me less than being just an okay stage manager.
So I talked myself into taking a break from theater to focus on my job and on music. (For the confused, performing in Revels' Christmas shows is an exception, but I never did that more often than once every four or five years anyways.)
It was only going to be for a year or so. But I did get a lot better, at both my job and at music, when I stopped doing theater, and the feeling of not sucking at something is addictive. :) So, who knows when I'll go back, if ever. All three of the theater companies I belonged to in my 20s and 30s are getting a lot better, growing past my skill level if they haven't already, and I find myself surprisingly un-depressed about the fact that I lacked the capacity to grow with them.
Sometime in 2013, I stopped taking on any theater gigs which involved my attending multiple weeknight rehearsals.
I should step back a little and talk about why I felt the need to stop doing anything.
I have a job. It's somewhere in between a day job and a vocation. I've held this job, with some internal variation, for 15 years, and so far nothing has come up that has caused me to want to quit it. There are things about the job I don't much like, but there are things about it I love, and, also, you know, I like being able to pay rent and eat and silly things like that. So. Job. Not losing job.
2013 was a watershed of two events: a piece of bad judgment on my part that damaged my relationship with my boss for a while, and a brand new computer system at work that offered me the chance to be really good at my job instead of using up all of my energy to flounder along using the outdated tools and patch jobs that had made up our last computer system. It was too good a chance to pass up, and also my boss had lost enough faith in my commitment to my job that I pretty much had to either step way up or start looking for another job.
So I stopped and looked at what else, apart from the crappy computer system, was preventing me from being really good at my job. And I went "...well, I'm not getting enough sleep, and when I'm at work there are always a million show-related e-mails and Gchats on stuff that can't wait, and it kind of sucks that I have to squish absolutely everything else in my life into the weekends because I leave the house every morning by 7:30 and don't get home until after 11, and I'm not really all that good at [stage managing, playing piano, Gilbert and Sullivan chorus work] but as long as I work really hard people will let me do it anyways but it still kind of sucks to know that I'm doing all this hard work on something that I'm still not going to do all that well and and and..."
And I contrasted the kind of time commitment and mental-processing commitment that theater required, with the kind of commitment that my participation in my two choir groups required. Vox Lucens, my Renaissance chamber choir, rehearses one night a week: I show up, I sing, I hang out and chat with my friends for a while, I go home, we do a couple of concerts per semester. The music we sing requires some practice outside of rehearsal, and my Vox experience is immeasurably improved by studying other music of the period and listening to recordings and working on the language, but all of that can be built in around my work schedule. The other choir group is the community-chorus arm of the Christmas Revels, which, again, one rehearsal once a week, a few concerts per semester, as much study time as I can fit in otherwise. And? I'm not a great singer, but I am okay. And being just an okay singer bothers me less than being just an okay stage manager.
So I talked myself into taking a break from theater to focus on my job and on music. (For the confused, performing in Revels' Christmas shows is an exception, but I never did that more often than once every four or five years anyways.)
It was only going to be for a year or so. But I did get a lot better, at both my job and at music, when I stopped doing theater, and the feeling of not sucking at something is addictive. :) So, who knows when I'll go back, if ever. All three of the theater companies I belonged to in my 20s and 30s are getting a lot better, growing past my skill level if they haven't already, and I find myself surprisingly un-depressed about the fact that I lacked the capacity to grow with them.