Please help yourself to some self-help...

Please help your self to some self-help…

Please help your self to some self-help-I’m giving it away free…

Seven of my self-help/improvement/enlightenment books are doing a terrific job- holding up my bedside lamp. The eighth is giving stalwart service as a coaster for the bloody camomile tea. To add insult to injury, it was suggested that I save the cold camomile tea bags and use them as eye masks. Well they are organic…?!

I feel as though I am standing facing a blank wall with my nose nearly touching it. I can’t magically spirit myself through the wall, I can’t knock it down and there seems to be no way round it. Life shouldn’t be like this; waiting for something to happen, even when that something is specific, and even more so if it’s something that is surrounded by mists of fear.

All the affirmations and admonitions to be patient, to relax and allow life to unfold/evolve/ (or bloody evaporate at this rate) are falling on impatient ears.

My determination to create a CV and take a small step into the world of theatre has fallen by the wayside.  My note to self to finish the play I started a few years ago (about a wedding, there’s a surprise) and maybe even try to put the damn thing on somewhere, have subsided in a stew of apathy – or more truly endemic lack of confidence. Okay, back in the saddle – or rather back on the yoga mat- and gallop across fields of meditation, mindfulness and being in the bloody moment. Again, it strikes me that it’s not so much that  my mind is a machine that  always plays the same  looped tape , but a  permanent   minstrel wandering the fields with the fairies half the time and the other half  wondering when the next bottle of wine and bar of chocolate will be along.

Good MORNING! Dahhlings!

GOOD MORNING DAHHLINGS!!

Shakespearean Saturday

Fell out of bed at 7. On to the early bus, feeling and looking like a wreck who’d spent the last 3 days fasting, being bombarded with gamma rays  and running out of hospitals in a backless paper gown..  Of course I was far too early for the Workshop. (I’m pathologically prompt). Into a nearby “cool” café (never been there before, turns out that “cool”=expensive) for a banana and café latte. Then back to the hotel to register along with the other 49 wannabees sorry participants, most of whom hovered around the teen/early 20s mark and many of whom also seemed to know each other.

So; First exercise; We had to stand up in front of the class, introduce ourselves and tell one thing about ourselves that would surprise every else. Really, that one could backfire! Then onwards to a day filled with vocal exercises, pretending to be a tiger or an elephant, walking around the room en masse while all shouting gobbledygook, playing games…

Lunch couldn’t come quickly enough. Out the door and in for a burger with 2 other participants; a nice woman who was already big into musicals – she sang in a choir. The other lunch companion was apparently some sort of movie extra –and psychopath…. I nearly ended up feeling sorry for her internet acquired dating partners, about whom we learned far too much. If I ever meet a guy called John from Tipperary who suggests – never mind.

During the course of a very long afternoon we had to read aloud, form threesomes and enact improvised plays. It became apparent that the definition of “good sight reading skills” was open to interpretation. There was a huge difference in abilities and those differences were not consummate with confidence.  Modesty forbids...  ah to hell with modesty. I was brilliant. “Warm”. “Funny”. Engaging”. “Authentic”. Thus was I described. Thin, hungry, demented I’d have said. Legend has it that really good actors find the core of character in themselves. Makes sense. After all, if you think you’re someone else, you’re probably in need of psychiatric attention.

Staggered off the bus bone tired, with only enough energy left to consume a Chinese takeaway and a bottle of wine before I hit the bed in a most dramatic fashion.

Stage-struck Sunday

Thank God this session didn’t start till 10am.

Today we learned how to do up CVs, introduce ourselves, and the importance of a really good show reel. More improv. More jumping around the room doing mad stuff. Then we were individually filmed speaking to camera, and then we had to enact a scene with another person who of course tried to hog the camera and speaking time…

At the end of the day, we all swore undying love to each other and I passed a sheet of paper round (I know, I know) with the promise of circulating a list of our ‘phone numbers/email addresses. Of course we were all going to go home and immediately start researching speeches for our show reels…and typing up CVs making sure to include the fact that we could skydive or ride bulls or do a great Transylvanian accent…Then we’d be ready to start persecuting sorry contacting agents with our thespian skills…

 I don’t know if I have the energy to be a drama queen – although there is a certain gentleman who’d say I deserve an Oscar for some performances…