I know I should do a year in review post, but I'm finding myself not having so much to say (except, scrolling down as I proofread, it seems I do). There was very little that happened, at least in the bullet-point sense of things, that didn't get documented here.
I went to Australia where I did things that mattered to me. It was absurd how many personal talisman moments I managed to have in that country ranging from those relevant to the absurdity of the reasons that first inspired me to go down there to the serendipity of the Maratime Museum and newstands that reminded me of my childhood. I couldn't stop myself from being in love with Darlinghurst if I tried. And I will always laugh when I think of how my scene partner made me fall down a flight of stairs. It's rare that I can think of moments where I utterly embarassed myself as steming from kindness, but this is one.
I've worked a lot this year. Last time I tried to count, I was approaching 25 acting gigs for the year, if one includes background work and assorted crap. That said, the background work was lucrative and got me into SAG this year. I also got my name in the New York Times thanks to one of the shows I was in. These are not things that ultimately mean very much in and of themselves, only what I do next truly matters, but they are shields against skeptics and personal doubt.
I got to direct this year (there's an unavoidable blame Australia theme here), and I think the play of mine in the Strawberry One-Act is going to kick ass. I've learned a tremendous amount about the nature of this work and hopefully I am getting closer to learning how to honor the nature of the committment. And while it has demystified the nature of the director for me, it has not deromanticized it. Sometimes, this is a character flaw I lament, but often it makes me glad, because it's easy for the shine to wear off all things, and I like a world that glitters.
I have two films I want to make. One on no money and as a lark as something for Tropfest Tribeca, that may truly not happen due to simple timeline considerations. My force of will can do a lot of things, but reordering time isn't yet on the list, regrettably. And then there is the other thing, but it's more a mater of when than now. Not because I'm procrastinating (which is an issue in general), but because it has to be _right_ and right now I more have the resources to get to where I need to be to have the resources to make it work, than I have the resources to just plow into it and pray.
Learning not to feel that everything has to be Right Now is hard.
A few years ago I tried to scrapbook everything I was doing as an actor, or meant something to me as a creative person, because someone I admire apparently does this -- each book's cover being decorated with something representative of whatever they wanted to achieve in the upcoming year. I discovered two things -- first, I do not have the temperment for scrapbooking. Second, that this notion terrified me, because what it one didn't manage to do it? When you live with no room for failure, what happens when you do? You lie on the bed and you stare at the ceiling and you just stop for a little while. It's a bit strange.
Oddly though, my nonexistant scrapbooks aside, I am two for two. I got to Australia by the skin of my teeth and the good graces of my friends at the very end of last year and I got into SAG with just a few weeks to spare in 2005. I'm not sure what's even on the list for 2006, although I have a general list, but not the one true thing hat must happen. I am relieved, for the moment, not to be suffering from specificty, but it is my nature to need to be. I made at least twice as much money this year acting as I did the year before. I won't really know until I get my tax papers, because I don't really keep track.
When people ask me what I'm up to, I am often embarassed by not having very much to say. The things that matter to me are too often going to make me seem worse a braggart than I already am, or even more a nerd than I am. My relationship, unsurprisingly, falls into both of those categories. We build worlds, she and I, and sometimes we don't even notice it's happening.
Someone I used to know used to tell me I acted like a victim all the time. And while we all have our persecution complexes, especially us only and lonely children, I've never really stopped resenting the remark. Mainly because it lacked nuance (or even attentiveness to my very real neuroses) and was more about his own comfort with what I had to say about my perception of the world than any truth that may or may not have been within it. But no, I am not a victim, but there's a truth to the idea that the world expects me to be, expects anyone to be who isn't playing by the rules and status most easily meant for them. It makes me a little nuts, and next year I have to stop engaging in the fight or flight response for situations that deserve neither.
Before I read His Dark Materials, I was discussing it with a woman in my play, who was trying to get me to read them. I had read the first twenty pages or so in a bookshop and wasn't caring. She said, "What you have to understand is that Lord Asriel is a man with no limits, and you have to understand what that really means." The sentence has stuck with me, as that character has, for I am a woman with limits, and largely, the truth of the matter is that I regret this, odd as it may be. For they are not just basic limits of ethics or a personal morality, but rather the sort I like to pretend I don't have, in the need of other people. There is someone I could have been, and someone I might have been, but in the end, I am just who I am. Maybe one day that will add up to a narrative that's worthy of something other than this journal, maybe it won't. It's not always easy for me to deal with, and something about being thirty-three has made me more than a bit insane about my mortality and the pace of my ambition, even as I don't seem to mind my grey hair and can mostly tolerate the fact that I have to be more careful with what I eat. But sometimes, I freak out because I'm achey just because the day just makes me that way. Next year, I will be in my mid-thirties and hopefully it will either become easier for my friends to understand (or for me to accept that they understand -- the nature of the problem certainly waivers) that if I believe in landmarks in a life, mine are different or not easily seen.
It is unlikely I will become less serious, less romantic or less driven in the next year or any year after that. With any luck, all those things will become more a matter of fact though, and as disinteresting, consistently true and occassionally startling as the weather.
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