A few weeks ago, I hit the wall professionally as two technical glitches prevented me from making money for a week. I did a mad scramble job search, found something I liked, but the training for it was more than I bargained for.
In the meantime, all of my creative outlets have suffered in an effort to prepare for one lucrative opportunity while taking advantage of another less lucrative, but daily-pay opportunity.
Yet, I’m so pulled to be creative. Breaks my heart to put the creative things on the back burner because I have to be an adult. What I do know, from spending nearly 5 decades on this rock, there will never be the perfect time to do something great. I got to somehow squeeze all that in between doing other shit to survive.
Fortunately, I’ve surrounded myself with creative friends. At least when I take a pause from the rat race, I feel rejuvenated. Even though everything in this world is temporary, misery appears everlasting when amid the grind.
On one of the worst mornings since getting back on my financial feet, the two things that kept me going was my usual midday yoga class, then much later at night, hanging out with some poet/musician/tango friends.
The host for the evening started us out with music, featuring himself on oboe and guitar, and another musician on guitar. Those two, who love doing an impromptu collaborations, were absolutely fabulous. I wished someone was recording, but apparently all of us wanted to stay in the moment.
I originally was invited to read spoken word poetry. Instead, as soon as I walked in the door, I started handing out scripts for a short screenplay I’d written. I knew exactly who I wanted to cast and ended up reading one of the lead roles myself because I didn’t know many of the women who were there. As a matter of fact, the only other woman casted was another spoken word poet. All the other women were there to dance tango.
I could tell the host was nervous about us performing my screenplay. He did a couple of songs, followed by some other poets, then music again. Finally, almost reluctantly, we set up to read the screenplay.
There were only two mics for the 6 of us. The narrator and the bad guy both went without a mic, but were seasoned performers and projected without any problem.
This was the first time my screenplay was performed with an audience. Nonetheless, everyone, from the narrator to the 3-line actor, knocked it out of the ballpark. With the changes I’d made after the first table read, I only noticed minor changes that I wanted to make, thanks to the performance.
Since I knew I wouldn’t have time to rehearse with the actors prior to the performance, I did everyone the favor of having their lines highlighted, which everyone I handed a script to thanked me for doing. Once again, Virgo organization saves the day!
I’m so happy that the two biggest laughs came toward the end. As a matter of fact, I blew kisses at the audience for one of the big laughs. And without realizing it, I’d written a crowd-pleasing cheer at the very end, which all the actors did and the audience even joined in on. That spontaneity made me so happy. Even the host beamed at the big finish and he enjoyed playing the bad guy.
At this point, my game plan is to eventually work my schedule doing more wonderful interactions like that than working jobs I’m passionless about. After one more edit, I’m going to submit this screenplay to contests. Beyond that, I’m going to write another one. For my next project, I’ll do myself the favor and make it a series.