Green grass on both sides

With High School Musical having been closed for over a week, I’ve had a remarkable amount of down time. I usually go from one to the next seamlessly: starting production on my next piece once I’ve opened the last… or worse—working on two productions simultaneously and staggering the openings by three or four weeks. For the first time in a year, I’m actually getting a huge break between productions. We don’t start rehearsals for Carmen Jones until January, so I essentially have the entire months of November and December (minus a few leftover promotional performances for HSM at UMBC and the Kennedy Krieger Festival of the Trees) to be theatre-free.

I was elated to finally be able to take a break. I haven’t taken a vacation in two years, so the thought of being able to hole up in my condo and sleep for days was looking pretty appetizing towards the end of production. Now that I’ve caught up on sleep (a little too much. In the past two weeks, I’ve slept through a standing weekly bar outing with friends, a few nights I could’ve been working on the next show, and even an evening with the beau) and have actually started pretending that I have a commitment to the company that writes my bigger paycheck, I’ve reached a point of complacency. With the complacence comes self-reflection and pensive moments. My thoughts of late (or today at least)? Why is it that the grass is greener on the other side?

I must preface this slightly-too-deep musing with a brief corollary: I’m not depressed. I’m quite happy with where my life is right now. So, if anyone happens to actually read this silliness that I write, please don’t be alarmed or feel the need to contact the local mental hygiene authorities.

Moving on… I think it curious that my life was filled with so much drama 7 or 8 years ago. As far I was concerned, I was fat (20 pounds lighter). I was SO talented (with loads less education and experience). I had so much longing, however, to just be anywhere but where I was then. When I was in high school, I couldn’t wait to be in college. I thought that would cure all of my gripes with life. Once I was in college, I couldn’t wait to be graduated and in the real world. Now that I’m 23, have a mortgage payment and two jobs—one completely artistic and enlightened and one completely… not… I split my time between longing to be back in my “innocent youth” (when I didn’t have to worry about bills or life or grown-up stuff) and longing to be 30 and more financially stable and married with children and a single-family home and a back yard and a dog.

Despite my vacillating life desires, however, there is one thing that stays constant, and that is my consistent inability to be pleased and crazy grateful for how fantastic my life is in this moment. So I am avowed to spend the next few days thinking about what it is about my life right now that I’ll long to have back 10 years from now when the moment has passed. Will it be quiet time or personal space or my 23-year-old body? Will it be my sense of humor or my ability to run out of the house at 10 pm to BEGIN to hang out? Whatever it is, I will remind myself to savor every moment that God has me this week… this month… this year. I will thumb my nose at my ego and be thankful for my independence from the viewpoint of both a woman who used to be 16 and a woman who will sooner or later be 30.