Inhale, Exhale, Repeat

Being new at a job is awful.  For the directorship at the Performing Arts Center, there was no real training, just a passing of the keys.  The keys had a good luck fish on the chain, which then broke off somewhere in mid-October.  I should have reattached the damned thing.  You would think a theater-type would attend to lucky charms, but I blithely let it go: I accept good luck with a glad heart, but do not curry its favor.

Fish or no, I just had to approach this job at a dead run, because the ground beneath me was always moving, demand to demand.  Facilities, productions, volunteers, partnerships, financing, planning, publicity, residencies, programming... seating charts and emergency exits oh my!  This on the plate of a woman who would happily spend her days up to her armpits in herring and lobster, daydreaming up musical theater numbers to film for YouTube about scrubbing scuzzy lobster buoys.  A woman who loves Alexander Graham Bell for his searching mind, big heart and brilliance, but hates the telephone- and occasionally email- with a passion.  I hate being tied to desks, telephones, or time lines I didn't make up myself and can't remake to suit circumstances when they change.  That was one of the beauties of Isle au Haut!

For the record, I have only managed a few things with anything like aplomb, but have had to approach the whole shebang with an internal cry of "onward and upward, Amen!"  Breathe in- just make it through the year- breathe out- you can always quit after the newness has worn off- breathe in- if you aren't a good fit- breathe out- but you won't know- breathe in- until you make it through this year- breathe out.

So I have made it though 3/4 of the year, breathing erratically and with a wicked stitch in my side.

But 3/4.  That's waltz time.  I like a good waltz.

I now have two more big musicals notched in the lipstick case on which I engrave my director's resume (I never expected to have a director's resume at all).  And I now know that I need to move away from Major Musicals and toward Many Smaller Projects, where my heart lies.  Not that I will get away from the work and expense of musicals altogether, but if I can pull together a show choir, it will ease the burden of having to produce student musicals every semester, or even every year. 

This year I learn, next year, I own. 

(I hope... I dream...)