Nobody on the cast list responded to my e-mail. I can’t say I’m surprised because that is exactly how life always goes, but still. I wonder how the hell Bike City does it--have a group of friends team up to do a group thing. I sure as fuck can’t get anyone else to do that ever. Maybe I should ask JR how he does it sometime.

I did see Jean this morning--she and her son waved when I walked by the house. So there is that!

Another disaster day at work. One person called in sick. Two others clearly obviously needed to call in sick but knew darned well they could not. My coworker who had her wisdom teeth out (Maria) is still Obviously Not Okay but had to come in anyway because everyone else keeps calling out sick. My boss is also sick but also came in because ditto.

I do find it interesting that some of our extreme early birds such as Maria and the sick coworker (okay, I just came up with an alias for her--the Lioness, it fits her personality and upon trying to look on a “similar name” generator that meaning came up and I was all yesssss, this works. I should also refer to my coworker out with the foot injury as “the Tigress,” for similar reasons, come to think of it) are having trouble sleeping of late. In my experience of working with the early birds for nearly twenty years, they never ever seem to have trouble sleeping, hit the pillow right at 8 p.m. or whatever and wake chirping with the birds at 4 a.m. and whatnot and never have problems. But between the Lioness’s anxiety and Maria apparently getting way fucked up by the anesthesia throwing off her sleep routine, they now sleep like I do: up half the night dolphin style. For years and years I’ve been trying to figure out how to explain to an early bird what it is like to be a night owl: to be wide awake and bouncing with energy at 11 p.m. and wishing you were dead at 7 p.m., because there really isn’t any equivalent experience that seems to exist for them in their world. Now they know the pain, y’all. I am sorry for their sleep issues but it’s nice to have someone understand for once, you know? (Also because I assume they will go back to their usual normal and I never will be able to sleep like them short of whopping illness.)

I heard from GQ today. He did not get hired in scheduling. I am sad. He likes his current temp job better though (hell, other than its location I’d probably like it better too), so there’s that. He is up for another job interview that is like this one in another office that has drama that he is not too excited about. He is fine with not getting the scheduling job because of all the drama going on there too. He said with everyone being miserable or gone and the “expectation of perfection at all times” that it was probably better he wasn’t there and also he was told that he “seems to have lost interest in the assignment.” To which I was all, WHAT? Dude was a real go-getter and was always jumping in on things, wtf are you talking about? His guess was that he went off depression meds and maybe that was “obviously more noticeable than I thought.”

I’m just kinda mad. What the hell does that even MEAN? That what, it’s exhausting to be here? Hell, I “lost interest” years ago if we’re talking about that and I’m not hearing that shit. I just don’t get it.

That will probably be the last I hear of GQ, sadly.

I am definitely in “sad that I’m not going to rehearsal” mode this week, so I have scheduled a lot of activities to be going on then instead. One of them being that Mary (who does the Sacramento storytelling events... lord, I now have several Mary’s listed in here and at least two of them are involved in storytelling, the other at Sierra) asked me to come over and work on my next story. Yes, please!

Anyway, I wrote up what I was going to do a few weeks ago on my stories about auditioning for Gumbo and then this show and then for obvious reasons have been occupied elsewhere, so I retold what I’d done then and she wasn’t super impressed, but had some good tips on what to do.

* When I explain why I don’t have any holiday traditions, culture or languages to talk about because “I’m a white girl,” she said not to just throw that line away.
* She wanted me to emphasize the being rejected, the hurt feelings, fear, and the issues that come up from not being good enough. I am telling everything on the lowest difficulty setting and not to rush it.
* My delivery is too fast and I need to take enough time with the lines and really nail some of them--they don’t all need equal delivery.
* I should be carefully punching out the sounds.
* My self-esteem rides on what other people think about me (certainly true in life).
* “You live in a perilous world.”
* When talking about how I feel being chosen to be in TnT--I’m happy and that Band-Aids the wound.
* How do I feel about what happened?
* I’ve learned something that’s going to help
* Include that did not see the Gumbo show this year because I had a grudge.
* The end--
* Note that professor has family T-shirts and expects everything to be sappy and happy about family.
* Do not mention that I showed up in a bonnet (I didn’t mention it originally but was considering putting it in)
* How does an actor learn how to be resilient?
* This was coming out of a community college professor?! What possessed him to treat you with such derision? “That might be the worst refusal you ever get in your lifetime,” she said. I then told her about the one time I auditioned in college and got “Is this your FIRST audition?” complete with snooty accent.
* She considers it to be a pillar of the story that how could he talk to you like that, and you had to eat it.
* Why did I give up that easy and not keep asking him why he didn’t tell me what the theme was? My insecurity. At that point I could have been stronger.
* What’s all this about? This is a risky endeavor and you have to be resilient.
* At least I got in somewhere.
* Scale--she wants some weight on one side
* Whether or not I have the right stuff to compete.
* Your piece has to have some gravity because you are important.
* Put in more at the end about what I learned and how to apply it--mention the other auditions.
* The shame spiral starts in your brain
* You bring a frank discussion of your feelings and risking your self-esteem
* “have some asshole talk to you like you’re nothing.” -- on “was this your FIRST audition?”
* Throw in accents and funny voices whenever possible--accents have a little spark. Any time you can use a character voice, do it, like doing some Loretta lines.

She said it should be a three act story:

Act 1: Intro to me as an actor and not getting in--college auditions.
Act 2: Gumbo 1, Gumbo 2, and TnT
Act 3: I’ve come through this--do I have what it takes to go on? What changed? How do I feel now?
SOMEBODY WANTED ME-- can I do it again? What if they don’t choose me?

How many blows can you take? Be judicious about your battlefield--I want you to protect yourself. (She is not super in favor of the idea of me auditioning for the Shakespeare play that the Winters company starts next week.)
* “Give it gravity. You’re an important person.”
* What do I make of it all in the end?
* Use the word “overconfident” rather than “cocky.”

She wants me to call her back next week and read her what I’ve got next.

In other news with Mary, we talked about improv (she is interested in trying it--and the Comedy Spot is offering a class designed for older folks so I passed that info on to her to look into) and karaoke because she’d like to see me do karaoke sometime. Maybe next Tuesday since this Tuesday is doubtful since Pyrate Matthew the DJ is in the hospital still as far as I’ve heard from Robert today. Robin said he is doing okay and mostlly was kept occupied when I told him to look into Matthew Dicks and Speak Up Storytelling, local vlogger Brandon Ferris, et al. and he kept reporting back on what he was finding online there. We also ended up watching The Voice because Mary is a fan of Maelyn and uninterested in all the three country bros (note: I’m writing this up a week later and Maelyn won, if you care).

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