Tuesday, August 18, 2009

One out of seven can't be that bad

I had a professor in college who was without a doubt a genius - she was also totally off a rocker, She always had her skirt tucked into her pantyhose. Lipstick on her teeth. Stacks and stacks of papers strewn across her desk, on her floor, teetering on the window sills.


There are days when I look in the mirror & I think to myself - Oh dear dear god I am turning into Katherine. This is not all bad. She is by far the most amazing acting coach I have ever known...but my house and my car and and my person are just a mess. I say I don’t have the time - this is true. I say I am exhausted - also true. But really, it is just that if I had to rank my priorities, clearly my house is sooo far down on the list these days that I end up hurtling over my bicycle with deflated tires, scanners, printers and underused computer equipment just trying to get to the bathroom.


Work, work, work and researching and applying for new opportunities to work, has pretty much taken over my life. Well, that and the active social life which has me rockin' the beer gut.


It is just that I am a glutton. I know this to be true because I am also Catholic & as a Catholic I have had the seven deadlies drilled into my head from an early age.


Also because as a kid my parents recounted the movie “Seven” detail by detail over the dinner table while eating spaghetti. I never did watch the movie “Seven” and it took years before I could stomach spaghetti again.


So I am a glutton and not just in the Brad Pitt, Kevin Spacey version of the term. I am a glutton for life, for experiences. I want to take in as much as possible and this sometimes gets me in trouble. For one reason, there are not enough hours in the day to take advantage of all life’s possibilities and secondly, there are always too many great options happening at once. I don’t know how people spend so much time being bored. There is always something new to learn or experience or absorb.


And this gets me to problem number 3 - my inability to sit still. For me boredom becomes depressing.


I try not to resist it. My yoga teacher says to embrace the yin in my yin/yang. Or is it the yang? I can’t remember. Maybe that is my problem.


Regardless I try to embrace my stillness but I am not very good at it.


A week after my last show I was freaking out. I made an appointment with my therapist, my business counselor, my bank advisor and my gynecologist just to make sure I was on the right track.


They all told me the same thing - to calm down and enjoy the down time. Well, that and “Lyndsey, for the 100th time, you DO NOT have an STD! The ‘S’ part is kind of a requirement for that to be possible!”


Yes, I am gluttonous. I am anxious to grow and learn.


And now as I look into the immediate and undefined, unstructured future, I am TERRIFIED to sit still because it might catapult me from my seat on the happiness train just as my butt was starting to go numb.

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