Need anything? Milk...soda...a joint?

"I just want to know if you think I should trust him."
"That's like asking if you should believe in God."


**

I know this feeling, and I hate this feeling.  This is a feeling that has yet to end well.  Worse, this is a feeling that I can't ever seem to learn anything from, despite getting beaten down with it over and over again.

I keep hoping that one day it's going to fucking work.  Maybe this time will be different.  Maybe because this time I still don't know if I want it to be different, it'll thusly be different, and I'll discover that's what I really want.  Maybe the whole process only works when done in reverse.

different is good as long as different is also stunning.

In the past three days, I designed, hung, focused, and teched yet another show.  Yay me!

Last week at work was terrible - I had one really drunk customer I got stuck dealing with, and he was absolutely disgusting.  I really like working at the club - I mean, I get paid to party, essentially - but every now and then I get a customer or a group of customers who are drunk and belligerent and think it's appropriate to scream insults at me as security escorts them out.  All this drama, only because they hadn't paid their bill in full and I had the audacity to point it out.  Sorry, sir, I don't care how often you come here or how much money you spend or how many bottles you order or how you and the manager are BFFs.  You still have to pay, thanks.  And tip.  It's only polite.

Anyway.  Otherwise things are all right.  I had an amazing Greek dinner last night at this teeny place in Hell's Kitchen. Tonight, I plan on going to bed early - I've not been getting a lot of sleep the past week and I really should catch up. 

So, in April I'm thinking of planning a weekend getaway...maybe upstate.  I want to get in the car and drive somewhere I've never been and stay in a cute little place and revitalize myself.  Could be fun, right?

skin like a dying man's dream of skin.

I suck at blogging.

Anyway.  I've been in New York for three and a half months now.  This town is ridiculous.  I mean, shit happens here that just does not happen anywhere else in the world. 

I'm in between shows right now; my next one goes up in mid-March.  So I've been taking some time off from the theater, trying to enjoy the city in my own way.  I spend a lot of time riding the subway and exploring different neighborhoods and people-watching in Grand Central.

I've been going on dates with a bunch of different guys - maybe in an attempt to figure out what I want.  My mom says this is perfectly normal, but given that I've never really dated in my life - I've either been single or in a relationship - dating is weird.  And obnoxious, in some ways.  Like, just because you bought me a nice dinner - and by "nice," I mean it cost approximately my rent - does not mean I'm going to sleep with you.  Particularly if you're some self-important stockbroker schmuck tethered to his BlackBerry.  Yikes.

I've been seeing this one guy I've started to really like, but he's already made it clear that our romantic relationship is unsustainable in the long term.  And then I have at least two other guys who I'm not into but are harassing me nonstop.  And then there are the all the guys who think it's okay to try and pick me up in a variety of places I prefer to be left alone in: the subway, Duane Reade, Whole Foods, the middle of Times Square, Starbucks, the liquor store, Pret a Manger, the lingerie section of H&M, Bryant Park.  To name a few.  I'm emotionally exhausted.

Also, I really want to be in a flash mob.  Where do I sign up for those?

you are one of the bruised apples God threw out of Eden.

My most recent design job has led immediately to my next assignment, a night of one acts in the same theater.  These shows are quite fun, and I'm glad I've got something to keep my mind occupied.

I'm in that weird place again.  It's similar to where I was a few months ago, only several shades lighter.  I'm much more in control but I'm making these overwhelming discoveries about myself, now that I've been thrown into a world that isn't dominated by school, or my parents, or the friends I've had for years.

No, I'm growing up now.  The hardest part, oddly, is the social part.  I mean, think about it - I've been in school my whole life.  My friends were the people I had class with everyday, or the people I worked on shows with, or whatever.  There was an element of consistency that made having friends natural and easy.  Suddenly, now it's much harder, because my world is so inconsistent.  I work in different theaters with different people all the time.  I work in different clubs with different groups of people.  I know a lot of people, and admit that my social calendar is pretty full, but I still feel very much alone.

The answer, unfortunately, does not lie with other people.  No matter who I'm with, I feel alone.  At the bar with friends, hanging out with my roommates, on a date, at work, having sex - I'm constantly struck with the feeling that I'm by myself.

Maybe it has something to do with living in the city.  It's easy to feel swallowed up and utterly anonymous.  Sometimes I feel suffocated by my own unimportance.  I occasionally have that old nightmare of mine, where I'm standing in the middle of a crowd and I'm screaming, helplessly, but no one hears me.

I should feel happier, luckier, prouder than I feel right now.  Aren't I living the life I always talked about having?  But living the dream comes with a hefty price tag, it seems.

and I don't know where to look, my words just break and melt.

Highlights from New Year's:

• Penn Station fucking sucks.  
• NJ Transit has ghetto trains.  Or maybe I've been spoiled by the Metro North.  Either way, eeeeeugh.  I felt like I was on an old Greyhound bus.  (To be fair, the train back to NYC was much nicer.)
• A homeless man on the train said I was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, and proposed to me in front of everyone in the train car.  I politely declined and he took it in stride.  Maybe he had better luck in the next car.
• I saw Anne!  Yay!  And met a bunch of her friends.  Yay!  We played board games.  Yay!
• Trip to Wal-Mart.  Is it bad that I felt all nostalgic and warm and fuzzy when I walked in?  Like I felt at home in a weird and sick way?  That's not normal.
• Peach jello and spiced rum.  OM NOM NOM.
• Delicious, delicious baked goods.  And snacks.  I ate, like, half a pan of brownies.
• Really, where were Kesha's clothes?  Someone should make Jenny McCarthy stop talking, forever.  And AJ from the Backstreet Boys has gotten really old and fat.  He should talk to Jennifer Hudson about Weight Watchers, because I think they played the Weight Watchers commercial at every commercial break.
• Did anyone else feel like the dropping of the ball was really anticlimactic? 
• I got like, two hours of sleep.  I think I was still drunk when I woke up, which might be why I ate, like, four bowls of Cookie Crisp at breakfast.  Seemed like an awesome idea.  Actually, it was an awesome idea.

I tried napping earlier, but got nowhere with it.  So I spent the day lounging around in my underwear, blasting the heat and watching Grey's Anatomy on Hulu Plus (which, by the way, is freaking awesome.  Every episode of every show ever?  For $8 a month?  Eat that, Cablevision!).  I'm still trying to get used to being alone in my apartment - so far, I'm unsuccessful.  I felt like an antisocial loser so I went out grocery shopping earlier, where something prompted me to buy a half gallon of carrot juice.  Amongst other really random items (including a toothbrush, several bags of freeze-dried pineapple, a York peppermint patty, and spray butter).

Tomorrow I'm going to check out a fabulous used bookstore I heard about near Union Square.  I have one book in my whole apartment and that makes me feel like less of a human being.  I miss my books.

Why so serious?

All my life, I've lived within a very specific set of circumstances: I've lived at home, with my parents.  Or, I've lived in some college dorm-esque fashion, amongst large quantities of other people.  Now, I live in an apartment.  And even though I have roommates, I find myself having to deal with being, well...by myself.  Being alone.  I've thus come to a conclusion - I'm not very good at being alone.  I get depressed, I get antsy.  I never figured myself as someone who needed other people around, but I guess I am.

The other problem is, I don't have a group of friends up here the way I had a group of friends back home, and that makes me feel extraordinarily lonely.  This, coupled with the pressure I feel to experience an exciting life in the city, leaves me feeling like some kind of social reject.  Maybe I should start hanging out at bars, or something.


Life has been interesting, beyond my neuroses over being alone.  The play went up, performed for small yet receptive audiences, and closed.  It was a really intense experience, particularly during the load-in and build, and I encountered the problem of not having enough functioning lights to light the stage (which I solved, in a frantic two hours before our 10 out of 12).  I had a good time and was sorry to see the whole thing end, even though I definitely needed a rest by the end of it.

I spent Christmas in Westchester, which was really lovely.  I managed to get back to the city before we were completely besieged by the blizzard.  And let me tell you: blizzards suck.  I mean, the city looked very pretty at first, all white and pristine.  But the trains and buses were all fucocked, everything was buried under feet of snow, and now that people have gotten moving again and some of the snow has melted, the roads and sidewalks are covered with a thick black slush that looks thoroughly disgusting.  In a word: eugh.


**

I sometimes feel like, as far as my romantic relationships go, I keep experiencing the same conundrum over and over again.  I wonder what I'm doing wrong, if anything.  I don't know.  I probably shouldn't be pursuing a relationship with anybody right now, since I feel like I'm still sorting a lot of things out for myself.  But, at the same time, why does that process have to be mutually exclusive from the process of, say, dating?  I mean, why should things be so serious? 

There are FOUR LIGHTS!

So, a Facebook-related question.  Why do the same 10 or 20 people always show up in the sidebar on the left of my profile page?  I mean...I have 700 friends, and it's the same group of people every time I hit refresh.  It's a little bizarre.  Has anyone else noticed this phenomenon?

This song came on my iPod this morning when I was coming home from work.  I was on the N train and literally laughed out loud, which startled all the other people on the train (who were asleep).  I then felt compelled to dance down the street to it when I got out of the subway.

Yesterday was a good day.  I went to a run-through of Things We Want, the show I'm designing.  As an audience member, I really enjoyed it - there are a lot of brilliantly hilarious moments (I mean, it's Jonathan Marc Sherman, and there's a grown man wearing a Catholic schoolgirl skirt through a chunk of the second act).  As a designer, I found the run-through to be extraordinarily helpful.  Of course, I took a ton of notes, none of which I'll be able to implement since I think I have approximately seven lights to work with. 

My mother has once again sent me a care package full of shit I don't want or need.  I told her specifically to please only send things I ask for, because I simply don't have the space for extraneous stuff.  She sent me all these clothes I left behind (because I didn't want them), and I threw them all in one of those yellow clothing bins down my block.  And she sent this old bag of coffee that I remember buying at least a year ago, but never finished it because it was seriously vile coffee.  The only useful things in the entire box (and it was a big box) were a cutting board, a dustbuster, and my Ulta eyeliner.  My mother is either getting senile, or she's going out of her way to annoy me.

I should go back to bed.  I got home around 5:30 this morning, and I have work again tonight at 8, and I slept maybe three hours.

a smattering of random thoughts

I went to the Trader Joe's in Brooklyn yesterday, which was clearly one of the best decisions I've made in awhile.  I got a huge bag of sweet potatoes for, like, three dollars.  Which I then had to schlep home on the subway.

Our third roommate moved in yesterday, and she and I went shopping today.  It's lovely to have a full house around here!

My mom sent my pink plastic Christmas tree, and I set it up in the living room.  It's more kitschy than festive, but it makes me giggle every time I see it.

If I hear the phrase "right relationship, wrong time" (or some permutation of it) one more time I'm going to fucking smack a bitch.  Seriously, it's frustrating now.  It's not even commitment that I necessarily want, but I miss having someone to share experiences with. 

I go into tech next week for my show.  I'm designing it on an 8-channel two-scene preset, which is even less technologically advanced than the two-scene preset I had over the summer.  It's not really a big deal, since I knew in advance that the space's capabilities were pretty limited and accounted for that when I started thinking about the design.

CSI: NY is currently my new favorite show.  If only because they talk about places and I can go, "Oh my god, I know where that is!"


Tomorrow: bank, hair salon...PINKBERRY.  And laundry, maybe.  I got a cute new skirt for work and I need to wash it so it doesn't smell like Brooklyn's Target.

seeing the forest for the trees.

I think, if I tried to see the forest, I would be thrown into a serious state of Overwhelmed.  In order to keep from going crazy, I have to look at each tree individually.  I have a lot of trees, currently.

The casting call last Sunday was interesting.  I drove to down into PA (which meant I spent two hours on the train and four hours in the car, both ways) to this hotel where Wilhelmina was hosting the call.  I stood in line, filled out some paperwork, got a number, walked down a long runway in front of 300 other gorgeous people (and a panel of talent scouts), and left.  It was pretty easy and I'll find out in a week or so if they're offering me a contract.  I doubt I'll get an offer but I'll probably turn it down if I do - there's a $2000 startup cost (to pay for my initial photoshoot and comp cards and website fees and shit) that I can't front.

Work isn't bad.  I'm getting better at hostessing and last week some of the other people there actually started to talk to me, and I didn't feel so weird and awkward like I did my first week.

Of course, I'm enjoying working as an electrician.  While I'm still getting the shaft in some ways because I'm the new kid (at focus call, I think I focused maybe six lights), I like the other people I work with and the work itself is comforting.  I think I'm working as a board op through Christmas and the New Year, which is fantastic.  December and January are notoriously slow months in the theater scene around here.

I went with some of the other kids from school to a backstage tour at the Gershwin on Saturday, and it was FUCKING INCREDIBLE.  I got to get up close and touch the costumes, and practically felt my heart flutter when I checked out the lighting rig.  So amazing.

Today I bought fresh produce at the market, and made sweet potatoes for dinner.  I have a lot of trees but I can manage them all, one day at a time.

What would happen if you said yes, instead of no?

I woke up yesterday totally sick.  Cecilie was sick with some kind of head cold last week and I think she gave it to me.  In any case, I was totally miserable and pounding Zicam like it was my job, because yesterday I had a business meeting in the city with the producer of the show I'm doing off-off-Broadway.  He wanted to show me the space and answer any of my questions before we shake hands on the deal.

Well, I arrive at the theater to find him waiting outside - apparently, there was a matinee performance going on and we couldn't go in and look around.  Annoying, but we couldn't do anything about that.  I was ready to tell him good-bye and walk back to Times Square, until he asked me out to lunch.  And, well, I hadn't eaten anything, and I really wanted to have a cup of tea...so I said sure, okay.  We went to this cute French/American place and I had a to-DIE-for omelet.  The conversation really started going, and then all of a sudden our business lunch became a full-day romp around New York City and Brooklyn.  It was so much fun!

While we were out, I got an email.  Yesterday morning I'd emailed the two major MEs in the city, and one of them emailed me back and offered me a load-in gig on Wednesday.  I'm so excited about it - I'm a bit of a work junkie like that. 

Anyway.  So.  I'm the kind of person who responds to intriguing ads on craigslist, like this one.  I kind of responded to it facetiously, because Wilhelmina is a huge and very well-renowned modeling agency.  I sent them all the necessary information, a headshot (my FB profile picture),  and a full-length shot (which I took with my iPhone, using my mirror).  I figured I'd never hear back from them, because the volume of responses they get is, assuredly, enormous.

Well, today, I received an email from one of their talent scouts, inviting me to their casting call this Sunday.  Which I'm TOTALLY GOING TO.  I mean, I doubt I'll get picked for representation, but what a cool and random opportunity.  It's in Pennsylvania, though, so I'd have to drive out there.  But hey, so far, I don't have any plans for Sunday.  Why not go to a casting call in Pennsylvania?