Exhaustion

One night back in college I crashed at the apartment of a friend who I was working on a show with. A bunch of us had gone out after a performance or something--I don't know; that whole semester blurs together in my memory. Anyway, I can clearly remember him apologizing for the utter chaos that was the apartment he was sharing with his girlfriend. She, also, was working on a show. Dirty dishes were piled up. There was no food in the refrigerator. She had only remembered to buy toothpaste after attempting to brush her teeth and realizing that there was nothing to put on the toothbrush. "We really ought to plan our lives better," he said. "Not work on shows at the same time. Otherwise, who knows what else we'll forget."

Theater has a way of taking over your life. Even more so if, in addition to your current production, you're writing a few others. The desk in front of me is strewn with mail and magazines. Magazines I've not had time to read in the past two months. Mail that includes unpaid bills for the magazine subscriptions. I guess that works out well--if the subscriptions get cancelled, maybe eventually I'll catch up. This is just my desk. I don't even want to tell you what my bedroom looks like.

I've got to start teaching again in a few weeks. If I can barely find time to do a quarter of the things I'm trying to get done now, what am I going to be able to do once I have sixty students to teach to write? I know that's my job (well, one of my jobs, anyway) and I shouldn't complain about what pays the bills. But sometimes I can't help but be envious of the people who have ONE job. One job that is fulfilling AND pays the bills. And when these people have time off from work, they have time off. They're not feverishly trying to figure out how many things they can possibly get done before they return. Maybe they're trying to figure out how much relaxing they can get in, or how many of their hobbies they can pursue...but not, "how many things can I get done so that maybe, just maybe, I'll fully be able to make my living off this some day freakin' soon?"

I'm afraid that the next time I look up, I'll have missed Halloween.