The Blind Leading the Blind

I’ve been pondering a career change. Although my part-time job in the call center of a Toyota dealership is very fulfilling and I have helped many customers make the critical choices between a Corolla or a Camry, Hybrid or gas, I’m not sure I’m really being challenged.

I’ve been researching becoming a Life Coach. I’m assured by many on-line resources, who want to take my money to teach me to become one, that it is a real profession and of great worth to the population in general. But how would I coach someone to get a life when I don’t have one of my own? Would this just be the blind leading the blind? (Hence the title of this blog post.)

If I’m going to help others follow their dreams, I better get some closure on mine. That’s what I’m thinking.

I had been looking at going back to school to become a real counselor but, sheesh, it takes years and I’m already old. Besides I have no money which is part of the impetus for a career change.

I thought about supplementing my meager income with a stable and satisfying job as an actor. We all know this is a lucrative career. Why, in my hey-day as a professional actor in Seattle I made up to $50 a week doing 7 shows a week of “Leave It To Jane.” Surely with inflation that has gone up to $55 a week.

Those two great ideas are based on life-long dreams that may not be as life-long as I thought. When is putting aside a passion, such as acting, not a sign of failure but a sign of maturity? I’ve never been accused of maturity so I’m not sure what it feels like, but I have felt failure. Are they different? Does maturity suck as much as failure? If so, I’m sticking with Peter Pan and refusing to grow up. Oh, who am I kidding, a 60 year old Peter Pan is shockingly sad and I could never fit in those green tights now anyway.

When is it all right to admit to oneself that you will never, ever move to NY, live in a dinky studio and study with Uta Hagen?  Is it okay now that Hagen is dead? Can I finally admit the real reason I never went was my pathological fear of cockroaches? When can I stop beating myself up for being a scardy cat and a big, fat wussy?

I never followed those dreams. Not to any conclusion. How could I possibly charge someone to let me guide them? To what? A part-time job in a call center?

Still, I wonder if I do have something to offer, if only as a cautionary tale. I could pull out all my press clippings (all three of them) and show them my videos of my fabulous career in Community Theater and scare them into taking a giant leap into their lives. Look what will happen to you if you don’t. Gives me shivers just thinking of the likely impact.

John Lennon once said that life is what happens when we’re making other plans. And it is true I have been alive these 60 years and I was doing stuff. It might not have been in a straight line toward a stated goal but some of it’s been fun. I guess. And I have had some truly wonderful moments in my life, not all of them centered on my kid.

I’ve been asking myself, what have I done that has given me great and lasting pleasure? I can think of two things, other than being a parent, which is the greatest S and M in life.(Should be "fiftey Shades of Parenting")

The first is watching sponsees flourish. I have had the supreme honor of working with sponsees in Al-Anon guiding them through the 12 Steps. Most of them never finished but three of them have. All three of them have vastly more pleasant lives than when they started. Not just pleasant –really fulfilling. They are happy and when they came into the rooms they were broken. 

Of course, being a sponsor is a spiritual position. I was not speaking with my own authority but that of the 12 Steps and a Higher Power. Still, I showed up every week, sat in the rooms with them, usually over more than two years, and helped. I did help. What a joy it was to help people who wanted help. I had tried to “help” all my friends and lovers over the years and their standard response was “piss off.” But these three women showed up, notebooks in hand, ready to take the next step, literally and figuratively. If I died now this would be my greatest achievement.

I also had a shining moment in the summer of 1990. I had started a small summer stock company in the coastal town of Newport, Oregon. We were in our second successful year of producing family friendly fare for the tourists and townies.

Because of a production I had seen of “The Miracle Worker” at my high school (thank you Kathy Paladino) I have loved that play forever. I never got to act in it but I decided to direct it that year. Would summer theater goers want to see a dramatic play after their Neil Simon? It turns out the answer was a resounding yes as every performance sold out. I had a great cast (thank you Annie Kaiser) and I think my love for the material shined through.

After a performance a grown man –in his 40’s probably –walked up to me. He was crying. He took my hand and thanked me for the play. It had moved him. To tears. And to take my sweaty summer hand. He thanked me. For directing a play I loved. He had been moved by a 50 year old play about a 100 year old story. No, it wasn’t Broadway. No, I didn’t make very much for directing it and the actors made even less for performing in it. But what a gift! To me.

Maybe I do have a little insight into following your heart. Maybe it’s not a grand plan but those decisions we make day to day just because our heart wants to. We don’t receive money, property or prestige. We get something better. We grow a soul.

Is that enough?

I want you, I need you, go away

Some of you might know that I’ve had a Kickstarter going this month for a web series I’m trying to produce. The series is called My Own Private Idol and yes, it’s about a crazy psychiatrist. I’m not here to beg you for money –we would need a frickin’ miracle for it to fund at this point (or one rich donor, hint, hint) but that’s not why I’m telling you about it.

I want to illustrate how a bi-polar –or maybe just I –process failure. 

My first thought? This is OVER! It will NEVER happen! I GIVE UP!

My next thought? Fuck them ALL. I’ll DO IT MYSELF! I’ll be the writer and actor and director and cameraperson, I’ll edit it and market it and won’t everyone be surprised. So THERE!

Black or white. In or Out. Up or Down. See the problem?

No in the middle ideas like –well, I’ll re-group, get some new people on board and try again. No –maybe I’ll ask for less money, or get two or three episodes in the can by myself and then try. No –I’ll find a rich guy to marry and he’ll give me the money.

See –good solutions to the problem. I’ve heard that for every problem there are at least 6 good solutions and 100 that are okay. But in my mind I either rely on people too much or I feel completely abandoned and vow to make it on my own.

This has been my life story. And it is an unmanageable way to live.

Getting back to the first step of the mighty 12 that I was talking about a couple of blogs ago – the first step has two parts to it, both extremely important to creating the impetus necessary for change. Once we can accept we have a disease –mental or physical – there needs to be a reason, a strong, compelling reason, to change our behavior around it. I accept I am overweight. I do have eyes and a scale. And a doctor who hammers it home. But they just took my blood and nothing too bad is happening. No diabetes (yet), no high blood pressure (yet) and they still make clothes that fit me (for now). Why on earth would I change my eating behavior?

I have heard this truth over and over; for real change to happen the pain of staying the same has to be worse than the pain of changing. 

So we have part deux of the first step; admitted we were powerless over (whatever) AND our lives had become unmanageable.

Being bi-polar isn’t my problem –acting like one, thinking like one IS. Never seeing even ground and hopping from one stupid idea to the next is my problem. Marrying three completely unsuitable men, spending myself into bankruptcy, moving from idea to idea within 10 seconds, making excuses for all the craziness around me –these are a few of my favorite things.

Someday I’ll tell you about the moment –the exact moment –when staying the same became more painful than change. It isn’t pretty and I don’t know you well enough to gross you out that much. Suffice it to say it involved food poisoning, a 3 month old baby and mildew. Sounds intriguing, you say? Keep reading., I’ll get to it.

In the meantime I am trying to bring myself down from the extremes I mentioned before. Trying to see the 6 good solutions and decide to work with one of them.

So don’t go away, I do want you and need you. It's because of you that I’m not as crazy as I could be.

How Did Margo Martindale get MY Career?

You may or may not know who Margo Martindale is but she has my career and I want it back. She’s off being in Academy Award winning movies (Million Dollar Baby), hanging out on TV sets with my soul mate (The Riches –Eddie Izzard) and winning Emmy Awards (for Homeland, I think). Now she’s going to have her own TV series. I hate her.

I don’t know her but I have a friend who went to acting school with her and says she was the pudgy girl among all the Kate Moss wanna-bes. They all scoffed and she went on to work more than all of them combined. The balls that took. Fish out of Hollywood water.

Even in High School I played the mothers. I wasn’t super fat or anything, I was always more “mature” looking because I had big boobies (and a little thicker waist, I admit it.) I wore a size 12 in a Twiggy world. When I turned 20 I turned down playing Gertrude in Hamlet because I wanted to be an ingenue for once. I did get a good role –Fran in Promises, Promises and a draconian diet prescribed by the director. So started 30 years of the craziest diet history. All rice diets, Master Cleanses, grapefruit, thin mints and nothing else.

I never, ever got thin enough –to anyone’s liking –and my self-loathing took on epic proportions. My review for Promises, Promises said I was “perfect for the role from the neck up”. Piece of shit journalist. He went on to say how much I looked like Shirley MacLaine in the movie and maybe that’s all he meant. Or maybe he meant I was a big tub of lard. I, of course, knew he meant the latter.

So was that what stopped me from fame and fortune? Did Margo just not care? I don’t know about her but my weight was just one more thing that kept me depressed and crazy. No other career –aside from modeling or ballet dancing –puts so much emphasis on  appearance. Especially at 20. And 30. And… I would tell myself that when I was older and the right age to be a character actress THEN I would go to Hollywood and be a STAR!

But my weight was/is just a symptom of my bigger issue – which was/is my mental health. If no other career wrecks  your metabolism quite like acting, it is equally true that no other career messes with a bi-polar quite like acting.

I was going to list my litany of acting successes here for you all to see that I had the “right stuff” but I realized I repeat those successes more for myself than anyone else. I keep trying to convince myself to “go for it’ by reminding myself that I was successful when I tried. And then I remember the failures –because every actor has been told No more than a pimply fellow at a 7^th grade dance. There weren’t that many. You know why? Because I quit acting and became a director. I got my MFA in directing. I was going to be the one saying No instead of hearing it. Control issues anyone?

The truth is that every NO plunged me into such despair and every YES threw me into a mania so that the chemical roller coaster in my mind was out of control. This was long before I knew about my own manic-depression, when my sister was still sleeping for three days straight and then staying up “cleaning” for another three. My mother once told me that of all our family I had the best mental health. OMG! Not a high bar. My niece once wrote me a letter telling me she admired me because I was so calm. Another very low bar since she was living with my sister and mother at the time. My Al-Anon friends got a big ol’ chuckle out of that one. They know me, you see. They know me.

I would constantly tell myself –give myself permission –to pursue acting when I had a “stable base”. When I wouldn’t experience all the extreme highs and lows. To me, that meant getting married, having someone who would love me whether I was the lead in a play or not. Several problems with that idea; I never dated anyone who hadn’t either seen me in a play first or met me in a play.  I once dated a theater professor -who should have known better –who saw me in As You Like It, pursued me and on the third date told me, sadly, that I wasn’t anything like Rosalind. No shit, Sherlock. It’s called ACTING you moron.

My first real boyfriend in high school didn’t show me any affection until seeing me star in the fall theater production. The night that The Dark at the Top of the Stairs opened, he kissed me. Being a star made me worthy of his affection. Otherwise I was just a slightly pudgy theater geek. An other.

What a lesson I learned from that. Want love? Be fabulous! Another actor friend of mine told me her new boyfriend told her she was “fabulous for 15 minutes”. That was me –scared shitless the boys would find out I was just a really insecure girl yearning –and I mean yearning –for love and acceptance. And when they did, my shiny fabulousness vanished –and so did they.

So here I am, at 60, still yearning –for both love and acceptance –but also for the guts to commit to my first love –acting. Is my mental health strong enough to take that roller-coaster ride? That ride that has actually killed a lot of people who were fragile and scared? 

I don’t know. I’m thinking about it.

Maybe when I’m 70.