Posted 8:47 PM by Michelle
Just a few thoughts before I fall into bed... yet another week of working just a little too much.

1) How is it possible that a country like ours still has the death penalty? I mean, it's beyond horrifying, it's absurd. In the year 2100, some hot second-in-command starship dude (preferably one that is tall and hulky and bearded and responds to the name "Number 1") is gonna look back at poor little pathetic America who still thought they had the right to decide if a person will live or die. Considering how we treat our homeless and elderly, I guess I shouldn't be surprised. But I am.

2) Because of lovely blog reader Jill, I've applied to the Peace Corps. Several of my family members laughed when they heard this, but it is a true funny thing. I'm banking on it. I want to do it. I am thrilled. The application took me like five hundred hours.

3) I think it's about time for the man I'm going to marry to show up. Just show up. I got time, I'm going into the Peace Corps for god's sake but I really think I've done this solitary thing long freaking enough. I'm a great writer of letters. When I'm in the bush, we will take "a little break" since you might have to sow some more seeds here in New York, and I might have to sow some of a different kind in Zaire or Zimbabwe. But really, I think it's time. I mean, seriously. I have so much to offer, and need so little of his time, so will the person standing next to him just tap him on the shoulder, give him a little nudge, and say, "She's ready. It's time." And then he can waltz right in where I work, or tell my friends where to find him, I don't know, call my brothers, take out an ad in the Sunday New York Times. Figure it out.

4) Birthday season officially has begun, starting with Tessa on the 9th, and Sean tomorrow, and Ian soon after, and then, well. After a year off, I do believe that Birthday Month is back on the schedule. Starting June, there will be a host of activities.

5) I'm going to sleep.

P.S. All of the typos from the last blog were a result of typing on my portable keyboard and Palm, since I can't see the screen so well and I uploaded it directly. I find them charming, and will leave them for the world to see.

Posted 6:43 AM by Michelle
I just went to an audition for a national Tylenol commercial. I hadn't heard from my agent since the day afer I got back from the trek, and it was nice just to get the call. The assistant who called me tokd me about the audition, and then said that they were still thinking of me, that they hadn't forgotten me, that all the calls recently were for weird ages and minorites, but that I was still in the front of their minds and that I would be hearing from them soon. It was really nice. Work inspires work, even if it is just an audition, and I spent the morning looking at next week's auditions.

Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to be in college right now. It was only ten years ago for me, but technology has gone nuts since then. We barely had the internet, and if we did, certainly never used it. I know I used email. I know my rent was $350 and that seemed like a huge luxury. Which it was. I had rooms in my apartment that I never used. I had a music room, for god's sake, something that I haven't had since. My refrigerator had its own room. I could easily sleep six. I was acting every day, writing every day. Why, then, do I not look back fondly on my college years like so many others? I see them as years of lonliness and hard work, with wee bits of fun thrown in only randomly. I have great memories of the best shows I did- Quilters, A View From a Bridge, A Comedy of Errors- and that makes me wistful of only needing talent and drive to get cast.

Now I live and work in New York. I haven't done a play in a year and a half, and even though my last show (The Second String) is possibly some of the best work I've done in years, it's not nearly enough.

I'm sitting here in News Bar, typing away on my portable keyboard and Palm Pilot, and realizing that I will never be happy with a normal life. I will never be satisfied with a 9 to 5, or even a 4 to midnight, for that matter. I don't even know that I would be happy with just doing a show for a living. Tessa once wrote me an email, saying that she could see coming to visit me, somewhere totally unlike where I am now, me coming out of a house where I lived with my husband, somewhere far away. i don't know how developed this vision was for her, but it is huge in my minjd and I can't seem to ecape it. Nor do I want to. I see myself somewhere far away, too. I don't know where. But I am sure, sure as I am of my family, that I only need find it. It is why I am still single, it is why I am discontented, it is why I feel not exactly right eery day of my life.

I've been searching online, looking for the people who are going to take advantage of me, who are going to find the right place for me in the world. I feel like I even know when it is supposed to happen- late September. I am committed to the AIDSRide the weekend of the 19th of that month, and then I feel I am free. I want to put this show together with Sean, do the AIDSRide, and then get the hell out of Dodge. I even feel like my landlord will let me go.

I have to know all of this in heart, less I go mad.

On that note, I'm off for an early Mother's Day, starting with a massage. It's going to be a good day.

Posted 10:55 PM by Michelle
Good god, I haven't written in five days? That's absurd. It's been a particularly harrowing few days but... well, I guess I shouldn't be hard on myself when I realize that I actually have a job, and full time job that eats up hours of my life. I would love to have the luxury of spending part of each day writing but it is simply not in the cards, not in my life right now.

I am just getting off two doubles in a row- a "quad" in restaurant terms- which means I was at work from 10 AM to 1 AM yesterday, went back at 10 AM today, and just got home- 1:30 AM. Nothing terribly interesting happend on either of these days, other than watching myself work through exhaustion, which serves to remind me of something I tend to forget: I don't mind being exhausted, what matters is the work that got me there. I never minded rehearsing from 10 to 10. I relished in sixteen hour days if they involved Red Cross work and EMT class. What I do mind is those same sixteen hours whittled away in a restaurant where I've achieved nothing but making some cash.

Sometimes I wonder, do I really want to run off to some place where people are truly suffering? Do I really want to go weeks without a shower or computer? Would I really be as at home with people who make $50 a year as opposed to those who spend $50 on a week at Starbucks? I question myself, honestly, brutally, and frankly, the answer is a yes, yes, a resounding YES. However, I have yet to find the company who is going to place me where I am going to do the most good. I've researched several organizations and all of them have one downfall or another (Habitat for Humanity? I would have to spread the gospel- YUCK!- CARE? I'd have to come up with several thousands dollars to spend a few weeks in Africa). So until I find the right people, I will wait tables, audition, and search for my future.

Meanwhile, I'm going to bed.