Working and books

I've begun to work more, which has turned out to be a good thing for both the bank account and my sanity, but as a result I haven't written here much lately. I'll have to work on that! After March is over I will have a bit more time, as I took a temporary chair massage job just through March. My other job is at a gym, with child care (!!!) so Anton comes with me. That's been fun so far. And I'm still commuting to see clients in New Orleans twice a month.

I read two books recently that had some wonderful elements, but that ultimately I found disappointing. One was by my favorite author, Joyce Carol Oates. I've read several of her novels, and liked them all, but some more than others. This one, I'll Take You There, had an interesting premise, great characters, and was, of course, written in her wonderfully perceptive and evocative prose...but the plot? Meh. I kept waiting for something really big to happen, and it just didn't. Or actually, there were some events that could be considered "big," yet something about the way they happened lacked the impact I anticipated. It's hard to describe. I have another of her books "on deck," so we'll see how that one is.

The next book I read was Eleanor Brown's The Weird Sisters. I picked this one up at a book store because it looked awesome. And lots of things about it were awesome: a quirky family with a Shakespearean scholar dad, an ailing mom, and three adult sisters who all happened to be at crisis/turning points in their lives - all back together under one roof. The exploration of birth order dynamics was quite interesting. There were some beautiful scenes. And yet, all three sisters' problems, which seemed at the outset to be very complex, were basically neatly solved by Perfect Men. Ugh. All of the elements that were NOT about romance in this book were so great, but the romance plots seemed really stale (one of the sisters literally runs into a man she likes...gah, will people please retire the accidental physical collision device???) and predictable. Having said that, I would read more by Brown in the future, because, as I said, there was a lot I liked.

Can't buy me love

I'm doing home-study courses for my massage CEUs this year. The CEU credits are required every year to renew my massage license. Usually I take hands-on classes, which have given me many useful new techniques over the years. This year, I can't be away from Anton for all of the hours a hands-on class would entail, so home-study it is. If I'd been smart, I would have done this while I was pregnant, because it's hard even to find time to read these days!

Anyway, part of my reading material is this book by the Dalai Lama, Ethics For The New Millennium. Here's a passage I especially enjoyed:

Compassion and love are not mere luxuries. As the source of both inner and external peace, they are fundamental to the continued survival of our species. On the one hand, they constitute non-violence in action. On the other, they are the source of all spiritual qualities: of forgiveness, tolerance, and all the virtues. Moreover, they are the very thing that gives meaning to our activities and makes them constructive. There is nothing amazing about being highly educated; there is nothing amazing about being rich. Only when the individual has a warm heart do these attributes become worthwhile.

I am tired of being told I should admire people simply because they have achieved some level of monetary success. The current economic disaster was caused by unchecked greed. I don't want to be another person who obsesses over money and status. I sometimes get caught up in thinking about things I could do with more money, and while that's not always a bad thing, it can make me feel inadequate and frustrated. It's important to remember what really matters.

The dust has settled.

I gave a massage yesterday for the first time in months. I'm going back to work soon (on a very part-time basis) and I was worried that I'd forgotten my basic routine and/or lost my touch. It's incredible what the body remembers - I couldn't think my way through my massage, but most of the time my hands and arms seemed to remember what to do. I set up the front room of our house as a guest room/massage room, and found it to be a great space to work in. Lit a candle, put on some music, and did my thing.

It helped that the client was my mom :)

Anton is a relatively happy baby, and is quite content to be my companion when I go to the grocery store or the Farmer's Market, or out for walks. And when we're home, he loves to play in his baby gym. Observe:



I've started on a new project, a theater thing. It will be a collaboration with one of my closest friends, and we're excited about it. I'm in the script writing phase now. I find that I don't have many hours to devote to it, but when I do find a bit of time, I make the best of it. Last week I sneaked off to Starbucks for a couple of hours by myself, and hand-wrote several pages at a frenzied pace.

I've been thinking about the future, and how to balance work and creativity and mothering. That silly struggle women's magazines have been writing about for decades now. I want to find a way to feel challenged, make some money, and spend plenty of time with Anton throughout his childhood. This new theater project, if it works out, would hopefully be a long-time gig, and help me achieve that goal.

Anton's napping, I'd better get back to that goal-achieving work.

Three random things I'm digging right now

1. My new Massage Star:

In general, I'm not a huge fan of using anything other than my hands (or maybe hot stones) during massage, but during my recent CEU class I got to try out a few different "toys" and this one I actually like. It fits in my hand well and is good for adding force without straining my fingers. Also easy to wash (some of the stuff I've seen looked like it would be difficult to clean...which really creeps out my inner germ-phobe).

2. PlayLab at Southern Rep Theatre. I hadn't gone to this in a while, and forgot how awesome it is. It's a venue for playwrights to hear short excerpts (or short complete works) read aloud by actors. After the reading, the playwright gets feedback from a generally thoughtful and enthusiastic audience of theater-lovers. And it's free! I've participated in the past as both an actor and a playwright, but this time I just went as an audience member. I got inspired, and wrote a new short play yesterday!

3. The Hey! Cafe on Magazine (at Napoleon). I don't know why I never went in here until recently. They have vegan stuff! Lots of it! Eclairs and cupcakes and vegan quiche and more! And you can get almond milk in your coffee drinks! Also the baristas are friendly and I've never had a hard time finding a place to sit. It's about a 20 minute walk from my house, which is good for getting some sunshine and exercise.

Work and results

A friend posted this article on Facebook, which is about trades and manual labor. It's a great read. I could relate quite a bit.

I graduated with a degree in Theater Arts in 2003, and moved to New Orleans six days after graduation. After about a month of temp work and frustration, I got a full time job as an Office Manager for an IT consulting company. I worked there until 2006, when I quit to go to massage school.

I never fully understood what exactly the company I worked for did. Nor did I feel that the work I was doing was important, beyond general helpfulness to my co-workers. I spent a lot of time bored out of my mind, and tried to learn new things to fill my time. There were a few things I enjoyed - the IT guy showed me how to make ethernet cables and we re-wired the office (that was fun!), and I learned enough about various programs we used that I was the support contact for my co-workers (that was fun, too!). But overall...yeah. Bored out of my mind.

I remember one day, one of my co-workers, who was not usually someone I would consider very sensitive to the moods and feelings of others, said to me, "You look like you're suffering from a lack of artistic opportunities."

This was a surprising statement, coming from this particular person, but it was, of course, completely true. When I was working on a play, I found that I could tolerate my "day job." Sure, it meant long hours of rehearsal on top of long hours in the office, but I felt like I was doing something meaningful. When I wasn't in a play, I got depressed.

I used to worry that I would always have to have a "day job" that I disliked, because it seemed unlikely that I'd ever make a living doing theater. I am so happy that I discovered Massage Therapy, because I love it and people seem willing to pay me to do it.

One of the great things about massage is that you can feel results. This is something the author of the NYT article talks about - tangible results. If I client walks in the door stressed out and in pain, and leaves happy and pain-free, you can't argue with that result.

But I think this concept also applies strongly to theater. When you've rehearsed a show for weeks, and then it opens and you've actually managed to pull it off, it creates this amazing euphoria. You hug everyone backstage, even the annoying people that drove you crazy throughout the rehearsal process.

And sure, part of that euphoria is artistic fulfillment, the feeling of connection with the audience, the risk of the live moment. But another very large part of it is simply seeing the results of your work.

And audiences love to see "the work" happening on the stage. When a performer is fully immersed in their work, their role, the audience gets to witness the result of hard work. It's immensely satisfying. As audiences, we want to see them pull it off.

As the NYT article mentions, we live in a society where work is often about vague concepts and corporate absurdity. It's natural for human beings to long for honest communication and visible results. The theater can provide us with that. Now, if only it would also pay our bills...