Everything is a learning curve when you’re new at something.
I’ve tried oil painting. Learned it takes forever to dry and Bob Ross I ain’t.
I’ve tried new software to make covers for my books. Yeah… lots of buttons. No joy.
I find I’m in a perpetual state of “newness” when it comes to anything in the kitchen, even if I’ve done it a dozen times before. My brain resets to neonate in that space.
As I type this, the Hubs asks me, “Watcha workin’ on?”
“The blog.”
“Am I in it?”
I glance at my working title and then back to him. “No. Not this week. Do you want to be?”
“No.”
The Hubs has mastered the learning curve of “Guest spot in blog = must’ve done something noteworthy.” Noteworthy, in this case, means Beth found something downright hilarious and the Hubs found… a learning experience.
Getting a role in the play Barbecuing Hamlet highlighted “newness” with airport runway beacons.
Stage right? Left?
Upstage? Down?
The lingo. The inside jokes everyone else has but me.
Oh, and how do you get off this stage because I can’t find the split in the curtain without running into a wall.
I felt like I’d shared a few with Alice and tumbled into an alternate world.
After a while, I got my stage legs, so to speak, and things smoothed out.
Until the director told me to “Use bigger arm movements” during my little solo bit that I had memorized from the very beginning.
Okay, no big deal.
I widen my arms… and go mute. Like, I have exactly zero words.
I look from one set of fingers to the other, my arms spread open as far as they’ll go—and I can’t remember my lines.
Evidently, we can have big arms or the right words. Not both.
Eventually, my body and my brain reached a compromise, and we managed so-so arms and mostly right words.
Then came dress rehearsals and “tech week.” And now, on top of the all-new backstage hustle, people are calling out times.
Five minutes to this.
Sixteen minutes to that.
Lights up in twelve.
Then a slew of people would chime, “Thank you, five.” Or “Thank you, sixteen.” Or “Thank you, twelve.”
I’m still trying to decide if this made the backstage jitters better or worse—ticking clocks tick up the angst, but knowing how much time instead of flying blind was good.
But that little “Thank you *amount of time we have left* ” has, for reasons unbeknownst to me, lodged itself in my brain.
I check the time and tell myself, “You have five minutes.”
I then hear half the cast of Barbecuing reply “Thank you, five.”
Someone tells me they’ll be arriving in ten. “Thank you, ten,” shouts the other half of the Barbecuing cast.
(I don’t even know. Couch Lady? Director Lady? I’m not sure who needs to diagnose this one, but it’s a slightly annoying new tic to add to my ever-growing Rolodex of tics…)
A tic that keeps track of ticking clocks.
As it happens, I currently have an intense self-imposed writing deadline.
And because I’m a geek and my brain is tic-ing and glitching, I decided to Google precisely how much time I have left to dance with this deadline before… consequences kick in. This way I know how much time I don’t have to write, how much time I do have to write, and how much time I’ve wasted trying to decide how much time I have to write.
At the time of this writing, that number is 148 hours and some change.
“Thank you, 148 hours,” shouts half of the cast.
“Thank you, and some change,” shouts the other half.
It’s go time.
The curtain’s rising.
The stage is set.
I spread my fingers over the keyboard—and pray I don’t go mute.
