2003-05-14 - 5:15 p.m.

Ahoy ahoy.

Yes, I've been incommunicado for the last 3 weeks, but I swear I have a good reason for it. I cocooned myself, as was necessary, in order to do some realizing, and thinking and life-altering. But first, I'll start you at the start of my story.

I am in a play, and a good one. The script is really good, my work is excellent, I'm working with a good cast, and the director is fantastic. I'm finally doing the acting I always knew I would do, could do. This play has meaning, my friends, and is both successful and critically lauded. I'm getting paid, and I'm getting noticed.

And I was unhappy.

Yes, my friends, I kid you not. I was at the top of my game, and I felt un-whole. Why, you ask. Was it not everything I hoped it would be? NO, friends, it was NOT! Acting, the reason-for-being, the goal of all goals, my one connection to the divine, simply wasn't what I thought it would be. Maybe it's because I was doing the work I'd known I could do, but never did: as long as this unrealized potentiality was unrealized, I could project all I needed to into it. But when it became reality, somehow, the magic drained out of it. And if I'm honest, I have to admit that it was magic I was seeking the whole time: never the reality of being an actor (spending my time talking only with actors, never talking politics or history, sucking up to people I don't respect, no security, and doing crap 90% of the time in hope of doing art the other 10%), but the romantic dream of being an actor. There's nobility in a starving artist, but none in a working actor. The time had come.

So, I'm switching gears. I know what I'm gonna do. And those of you who've been reading this screed for the last year know what that is. The Foreign Service. I'm going to grad school. I've got a couple likely programs picked out, I've signed up for the GREs (june 9th) and summer courses in Economics at BCC. I've got three letters of recommendation promised from NC profs, and I feel so excited that I can barely sit still. I wanna learn, I wanna think, I wanna grow, I don't wanna spend the rest of my life feeling cut off from everyone I know because I read things. Actors are, mostly, like High School students: terrified of being too different from their peers. I've seen what happens to smart actors: they grow bitter and alone, they become assholes convinced of their own superiority, they are never really happy. I don't want that to happen, I don't want to get 'used' to doing really good acting until its like cutting the grass. I'll always love it, but I can't live with it.

I don't want to act.

And of course, now that I've made this momentous decision, I'm starting to get lots of job offers, and my networking is now starting to pay off. But it doesn't matter: success as an actor ssimply doesn't excite me anymore. So, I'm not making this decision in the throes of self-pity, I'm not running away from fear of failure. And funnily enough, I know that if I go back to acting now, I will be taking the easy way out. I feel liberated.

So, any of youse out there what have experience getting into grad school, gimme a ring, lemme know what I can expect and what I can do to prepare. If anyone wants to call just to say hi, I encourage that too. I can't make it to NC for graduation, sadly, because of the play I'm doing, but I'll try to get up there either the Monday before or after. I love you all, and thanks to everyone who ever came to one of my plays, who ever supported me, who ever told me they believed in me: in short, to everyone. You are my reasons.

PS- Actionhero and Hephaestus. You and Doenecke were right. I just had to be me.

�

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