Busy busy busy busy busy

My anxiety these days is subtle. It creeps in, undetected, until I can feel it roiling in my veins.

I sit at a table, waiting for rehearsal to begin, and very quickly, I feel desperate to disappear. To curl into a tiny ball and not be seen.

I don’t feel scared. I don’t feel sad. I just feel completely uncomfortable. Nerves exposed. Fragile. It’s almost the tenuous nervousness before speaking the first lines of a play, or waiting in the dark for the lights to come up. Except I don’t have a line. And the lights are already up.

Maybe it’s the Wellbutrin. I know that can cause anxiety. But it has been really wonderful to feel able to accomplish everything I want to do– the Wellbutrin is doing its job of activation very well. I’m reading up a storm, I am okay with leaving the house every morning and making my way around the city all day and stumbling home at night. I used to get headaches while drinking, but for some reason since the increase, it hasn’t been so bad. Maybe the difference is taking it in the morning. Ah, who really cares, as long as it’s working.

I haven’t written in a while. I’ve been busy, and to be honest, sort of bored. Not genuinely bored, like “ugh, so much time to do nothing, I’m so bored,” but more like “I’m really busy for the most part, but not with much that’s exciting, and everything I do is all over the place and inconsistent and even when I’m home I’m not totally relaxed.” Although I guess that’s not “bored?” Is it? Does anyone know what I’m talking about?

Well, let’s see.

On Saturday, I got fitted for my bridesmaid dress for R’s wedding. Her family is very wealthy, so they’re generously buying all of us our dresses– which, just FYI, are DESIGNER and STUNNING. Here’s mine:

(except in Lavender)

Yeah. I KNOW.

Then we got mani/pedis and went and got dinner and margaritas at one of R and our favorite places downtown. I had to leave early to meet A to see a show we had comps for, but all in all, a really nice day with a very complementary group of ladies. I have had struggles with each and every one, but today we celebrated R and each other, no strings attached.

Last night, I did a reading with a young theatre company I occasionally work with (they’re the folks who did the Sir Peter Shaffer event where I was in a reading of one of Sir Peter’s plays for an audience that included the man himself, Alec Baldwin, John Guare, Stephen Sondheim, and the woman who originated my role on Broadway, Juliet Mills.) It was a goofy play, and my part was supporting, but it was fun. And guess who it starred, theatre nerds?!

Yep, that’s Anthony Rapp of RENT fame. I know him from other stuff, and I’ve met him a couple of times before, but it really impressed my mom. 🙂

What else?

I’m working less this week, since my boss is in tech. That’s a real pleasure. I basically just sit in the air conditioned office and half work, half goof off in the quiet. I love A, but it’s nice to have time where we can be separate and just work on our own things. He actually just got an email back from his agent, after waiting a while, and it turns out his agent wants him to do a serious overhaul on the book before he pitches it to the American markets. I know A is disappointed, and I do wish that he could just move forward towards the next project, towards making a deal, and be done with the editing, but of course, THIS is the work of being a writer. At some point soon, he’ll have to radically accept that. And it looks like his agents wants him to really dig in deep. So. I’m trying to figure out how to support him through that, when I know that’s not really what he wants to do. We both (or at least I) know it’s undoubtedly necessary, but I know the time and workload feels very overwhelming to him. He’ll do it… we’ll just see how it goes.

Tomorrow is exciting! A and I planned a “day of fun” where we took off work completely and didn’t worry about money and splurged on fun stuff. So, here’s the agenda:

Drunch at Big Daddy’s:

A matinee of our favorite show in town:

Dinner somewhere followed by a performance of this fabulous play (I’ve seen it, he hasn’t):

And finishing (if we can) with dessert and a bottle of wine at our “2nd date wine bar.”

Annnnnddd…. maybe I should do some work now. 😉

What have you guys been up to this week?