Category: Uncategorized

Well folks, it’s been a busy few weeks over here and unfortunately, I got my dates mixed up and did not manage to get my post written and up on time. Oops!

But, I do have a lot of fun updates!

First and foremost, after [redacted] months of searching, I have finally landed myself a job. It’s a long term temp position, but I’m finally starting to feel like I’m back in the swing of things, and it feels great. Admin work isn’t the most interesting, but I’m putting on pants every day again and leaving the house to go do something I’m really good at, and that counts more than anything.

It feels really nice to have my brain up and working again, and getting to interact with other people. I’ve been doing my editing work all this time, but it’s definitely not a social job, so I’ve been missing human connection.

Wow. Someone tell antisocial 11-year-old Rachel I just said that. She would be horrified.

Speaking of things I’ve been up to that my antisocial preteen self would have hated, I also went to my first concert in almost eight years!

My best friend and I saw Jukebox the Ghost perform at the Karbach Brewing Co. Love Street Music Fest, and it was such an amazing time. I haven’t 

been to a lot of concerts to compare it to, but they were really fantastic. 

It’s so funny. When I was growing up, there was nothing more I hated than loud

noises, big crowds, being outside in the heat, and standing up for a long time. This was, of course, all of those things at once, and I had a BLAST.

I really couldn’t say when I changed and started to get over those things, but it’s crazy how different I am from the person I was growing up.

Only in the best ways of course.

I still value the same important things, and I love the same hobbies. I’m still kind and caring and funny and smart. I’m just so much less complainy and grumpy about things. Maybe it’s just me growing up and maturing, but it’s such a relief to be able to have FUN now. I’m able to have so much fun and do so many fun things that I never would have opted into as a kid.

I’m still complainy and grumpy of course. But, like, a LOT less.

I was eleven years old when I performed in my first “real” play. I’m twenty-three now, meaning we’ve officially passed the “more than half my life ago” mark, which I’m realizing now for the first time and it’s blowing my mind a little.

For my entire childhood, I was plagued with severe anxiety, so the fact that I would A) voluntarily choose to be onstage in front of several hundred people, and B) enjoy it as much as I did, was shocking to anyone who knew me.

At the time, I didn’t understand it either. All I knew was that the second I walked onto that stage, I felt more at home and in my element than I maybe ever had in my life. Looking back now, I think it was the first time my brain was truly silent in a room full of people.

It seems contradictory, to be a person with social anxiety who loves getting up and performing in front of crowds of strangers. It’s not nearly as bad as it was in school, but I still have a very hard time letting myself be seen and fully letting loose or expressing my emotions in front of others (at least, not without overthinking it for the next 3–5 business days). But to me, the stage is a safe space to do exactly that.

When I’m onstage, I’m playing a character, and the things I do are directed by someone else. So I can be loud, or messy, or ugly, or imperfect, and subconsciously, it feels safe. My social anxiety quiets down and steps out of the way because it can hide behind the idea that it’s a performance, and I can let myself do and be these things because even though everyone is watching me, they’re seeing a character.

And the thing is, it’s not that I didn’t ever want to be those things. In fact, growing up, I wanted desperately to just once be the life of the party somewhere, and have everyone think I was fun, and cool, and laugh at my jokes, and want me to be around them.

It wasn’t even that I was bullied, or was made to believe I couldn’t do that, but social anxiety convinced me that I had dug myself into a “quiet weird girl” hole, and any attempt to break out of that would be met with instant ridicule and judgment.

And that’s why theatre appealed to me. Because more than anything, I wanted - and really, needed — to be seen. I needed some way to let the world know that this other girl, the dynamic, fun, loud, emotional girl, existed somewhere within me, even if I had to shield her behind the invisible fourth wall of a plywood set.

Fast forward twelve years, and I’m an adult now with a pretty active social life, full of friends (none of whom I would have met if I hadn’t joined community theatre after high school) who make me feel that level of safety even when we’re not performing. I’m able now to go to parties and join conversations and laugh and be loud and a little messy and feel more loved than I ever thought was possible, and do all the things I was too afraid to let myself do when I was growing up.

I still struggle with reminding myself that I can be that vulnerable of course, although I’ve reduced the overthinking time to about 1–2 business days, which is definite progress. But I don’t think I would be anywhere near where I am today if I hadn’t put my name on that audition sign up sheet twelve years ago.

Theatre has time and time again given me the opportunity to safely shut off the anxiety noise and openly explore parts of me that have spent so long locked away. With every show I do, every bow I take, another bar is removed from that girl’s cage and it’s just a little easier to bring her to the surface.

I have always been that dynamic, fun, loud, emotional girl. She just needed some stage lighting to guide her way out.

One of the really great things about the work I do as an editor is that I have the freedom to make my own hours and adhere to my own schedule. I hate waking up early and have always done my best work late at night (I may be writing this at almost midnight, but shhhh), and I love being able to work around the hours my brain seems to naturally do best with.

One of the hard things, though, is having to be the one to enforce that schedule. Especially when things like mental health get in the way.

I’ve always made it a point to advocate for destigmatizing mental illnesses, and in past blog posts have certainly alluded to the fact that these past few years have been rough on me, like many others. So, leading by example, I have no problem sharing that I have had some pretty intense struggles with depression and anxiety, particularly over the last year.

Of course, I say I have no problem sharing, but there’s that part of me in the back of my mind going “NOOOO delete this and write something else, this makes you look SO unprofessional, people are going to think you’re falling apart and you’re unreliable!!!”

Which is exactly why it’s so important for me to share, because it’s not any more shameful than a physical illness. If I had chronic migraines, I wouldn’t be embarrassed about them keeping me from work or other life events.

And yet, when it’s a depressive episode or panic attack, it ends up being a big source of shame that I let something that’s “all in my head” prevent me from completing projects on time (and thus I feel unprofessional, and I’m ashamed, and that causes stress, and that makes the anxiety/depression worse, and then we get ourselves a nice little spiral). As always, not something I would ever hold against someone else, but our self standards are never as realistic or gentle.

In a way, it’s nice not having a regular 9–5 in these moments, because it’s much easier to take a day off without having to answer to anybody. I’m my own boss, and I can’t exactly fire myself or have myself written up for subpar work or unapproved absences.

But of course, I do have clients, and I do end up feeling incredibly guilty when I’m not always able to meet the deadlines I promised when I was in a better headspace, or I forget to answer an email and the anxiety of it all makes me put it off even longer. 

If I was injured, or came down with the flu, I would have no problem sending out emails to alert folks that I’m going to be a week or two behind schedule. But it’s not exactly a standard practice to send an email that says “Hey Jimmy, this is going to take me a while longer. Unfortunately I’m having a prolonged bout of anxiety because I had to deal with something triggering in my personal life and now I must lie in bed and watch all of Breaking Bad instead of attending to my work responsibilities while my brain calms back down.”

…Which may or may not have been what I was up to the last few weeks, hence this choice of blog post as I’m getting back to a better frame of mind and playing a great deal of catchup. 

I don’t really have much advice here or a plan of action for next time, other than therapy and becoming more comfortable at least saying, “Sorry, I have a personal matter to deal with.” But I wanted to write this anyway, to let other professionals and creatives know that if they’re dealing with similar things, they’re not alone. All we can do is be gentle with ourselves, do what we can, and nurse our souls back to a place where we’re able to pick back up and get back to our real selves.

And for the record, my Breaking Bad binge truly was epic. Not sure it helped my stress, but DAMN that’s some great TV. And a good reminder that as down or anxious or otherwise stressed as you may be, at least you’re not trying to build a meth empire in Albuquerque.

Sometimes perspective helps.

When the pandemic hit and we all went into quarantine, I was twenty years old, and had just moved out of my childhood home barely three months before. That means I only had from December 2019 to March 2020 to experience “normal” adult life, on my own in the real world, before everything shut down. I had finally made my big move to join the world, and then the world went dark.

Most of my first year away from my family was spent in near complete isolation, followed by a serious relationship that, without going into too much detail, ended up being even more isolating than the quarantine. 

Now the world has opened back up, and I’ve long since reconnected and made amends with the important people that got pushed away, but three years later it feels like I’m more or less right back where I started in late 2019. I’m back living with family and once again fighting for the ability to support myself and get back out into the world.

I’ve heard a lot of early 20-somethings say the same thing, that the events of the past three years somewhat forced a false start, and now we’re all trying to remember who we were and who we wanted to become before everything was put on pause. It’s difficult enough to figure out your early 20s when the world is normal, and I know I’m not the only one who feels like they’re only a few baby steps into climbing what looks like an impossible mountain.

I’m struggling to figure out the next half of this post, because I’d really like to spend it laying out what my plan is and how I intend to relearn who I was before global isolation and a damaging relationship made me forget, but honestly, I’m still not sure. And that’s okay I think.

Growing up as a massive perfectionist, it’s hard to accept that I can’t write out a step-by-step checklist with “HOW I’M GOING TO FIND MYSELF AND START A CAREER AND BE THE PERFECT ADULT” at the top of the page and expect it to work. I thrive when I have structure, and the realization that I’m just as much of a mess as everybody else is a truly scary one for me.

But that’s the thing. I’m just as much of a mess as everybody else. There’s not a person in the world who doesn’t feel messy on some level, and it’s silly to think I’d be the one exception. I don’t love my friends or family any less when they’re not perfect. It wouldn’t even cross my mind. Every single organic being in the world is a little imperfect, and it doesn’t make them any less lovable or important.

Four-leaf clovers come from genetic imperfections or developmental errors, and they’re considered lucky. We’ll spend hours in a field seeking them out, not caring a bit about their normal three-leaf neighbors.

My black cat (ironically, an unlucky symbol), Nero, had an infection as a baby that caused him to go blind. He has no eyes, technically an imperfection, and he bumps into things and misses the litter box and one time accidentally headbutted me so hard my lip was bruised for a week, but it doesn’t make him any less lovable, important, or smart.

If we can recognize that in nature and in our pets, we can recognize it in ourselves. I am imperfect, and messy, and certainly very lost after the last few years, but it hasn’t made me any less smart, caring, talented, funny, and creative. I may not have a good grasp of who I am and who I want to be outside of those things, but those are the most valuable anyway, I think.

I may not have a plan, but I am still important, imperfect, and alive. And that’s enough.