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By Rebecca, August 12, 2009 12:02 am

I just got back from my therapist, Laura, and it was a hard/productive session. (Funny how those two things are so often tied together in therapy…) So I have a few things are churning in my mind right now that might ultimately need to be spun out into multiple posts, but lets see where thinking out loud gets me.

I’ve been feeling some heavy procrastination/writers block lately. I think it’s partly because, in my mind, performance (which is the end goal of much of my writing) is so related with not only outing myself but revealing potentially embarrassing personal details.

Obviously, theatre doesn’t inherently involve revealing deep, hidden parts of yourself (although I think good theatre often does) but I’m kind of gearing up toward this hour-long personal narrative piece I’ve committed myself to, which will revolve around my experiences as a trans woman. Now, I can do things (like the ‘Coming Out Lecture’) that are more indirectly personal, and not simply “Here’s something about myself I’ve never shared before.” But at least some of the show is going to end up like that.

Continue reading 'Putting it all out there…'»

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By Rebecca, February 11, 2009 1:37 pm

I have a hangup in that I get very guilty and regretful when I see a project come to completion that I could have worked on, but didn’t. Last night I went to one of the final dress rehearsals for Sleepy Hollow, the show the theatre company I’m involved in is working on. It goes up tomorrow, and honestly is really great – it’s a musical retelling of the story, with live music played on-stage by the actors, and is a lot of fun. (At 75 minutes, it also is long enough without being too long.)

However, because of the stress and pressure I’ve been putting on myself lately, I stood up to the theatre company and said that I could only help minimally, and couldn’t commit to being at shows for house managing or whatnot. They weren’t happy about this, but I stuck to it because I had finally be convinced I need to drop responsibilities and focus on myself for a while.

And yet, when the performance was over, I had a pang of regret that I hadn’t helped out, even though I know I would have regretted doing that, and would have just added tons more stress to myself.

Likewise, the friend whose recital piece I was scheduled to work on saw the blog post where I talked about it being stressful, and we found a way that I could provide input and help without having to commit to the whole process. Definitely a good decision, and one that will undoubtedly lower the stress in my life, something I really need right now. But I know when I see the final performance, I’m going to regret having backed out.

I just always place so much weight on every individual project. I know I’m still young, and have a long artistic life ahead of me, but I always feel like if I don’t work on this project right now (for whatever ‘this project’ is) I’ll miss out on some unrecoverable experience.

I’m trying to change my point of view, but I just can’t emotionally get behind the idea that there will be more time for more projects in the future.

-R

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By Rebecca, October 14, 2008 6:52 pm

I know I just said that I’m not going to “pretend (explicitly or via omission) that I’m not trans” as part of a response to a post from Being T about photos and their place in the author’s life as a trans woman. But I’m currently going through old home videos because I was hoping to use some of them at some point in the solo performance project I’m working on.

And they just make me want to cry.

They make me feel like I’ve wasted 23 years of my life, and lost something I can never recover.

They make me remember that I’ll never experience childhood as R, grow up as R, go to highschool as R, go to college as R, graduate as R, and on and on and on.

They make me hate who I am now, for dallying and postponing and delaying and waiting.

Continue reading 'The Past'»