I’m feeling a little stale right now.
Boredom is something I feel a lot. I had a performance review at my day job a few weeks ago. My boss said I seem like I’m plateauing and I told him that I’m incredibly bored with this job most days. My priorities are calling 80 people a day and trying to get one application a day. Most days I’m leaving upwards of 50-60 voicemails and maybe speaking with 10 people. The other 10 people don’t have a voicemail or hang up after I introduce myself. To fix this he said I could watch TV or something while I make these calls. Sigh. I guess this is better than having guests ask me why they haven’t been seated at an overpriced Israeli restaurant in Fort Greene while my manager tells me I’m a piece of shit.
I feel so bored writing this now. I feel like you might be bored, too.
My friend Cath said this week that she cares too much about her audience and that’s mostly why she left theatre: she cared so much about what the audience thought that she could not enjoy what she was doing. I feel that with self-tapes since I’m my own director, grip, producer, costume designer, etc when taping those in my apartment, thinking about what my performance looks like and how it will read to casting. I feel that most here, though. I feel scared of writing because I feel like you’re not enjoying it. You. I have never asked myself if I’m enjoying this.
I have a workhorse mentality: I only feel worthy of existing if I’m making something or being productive. I think this is some strange residual working-class-generational-trauma but I have never felt at peace unless I can feel myself working. I feel useful if I am using my body in a physically demanding way. If I can feel the swelling of my feet from running around a restaurant, if I can feel the pee I’m holding because no one can cover me, if I can feel my exhaustion within an hour of clocking in I have earned my keep to myself.
The reason why I wanted the day job I have now is because it is NOT physically demanding. I purposefully took this job to not feel burned out everyday. I realized (in therapy) that thinking I need to sweat and drain myself everyday would not be good in the long game. None of it was helping me get closer to where I wanted to be, especially financially, so I needed to make a change. This change is part of caring for myself.
My boredom is necessary, although I feel like sometimes it follows me like the Chef Boyardee cans from the early aughts. My boredom now is because I haven’t written this in two weeks. Auditions have been slow with Labor Day and summer wrapping up. It’s been too comfortable. Something is changing. I do enjoy this.
