Those Moments of Joy

Every so often, I have one of those moment where I step outside of myself and feel extremely thrilled with what I am doing.

It happened once about seven years ago, one night at Dyke Mic, when we were ensconced in the upper level theater in the back of Bailiwick. There was a drumming group and the audience was PACKED in, filled with all kinds of characters. Anyway, the drum group started and everyone started jamming--just dancing so freely and there was this collective joy in the air--and I thought to myself, "Man, I can't believe I'm so lucky that I get to instigate all of this and take part in it."

Last night was another one of those nights. I left my Board meeting for my jobby-job and drove home a Board Member, her husband and a colleague of his. The mood in the car was gay (not homo, just lighthearted) and I dropped them near my house. They are neighbors of mine, and we bumped into one another all over Clark Street last weekend. They invited me to come out and join them on my favorite pub patio on Friday for drinks n' burgers. Nice.

They are really amazing smart people my age who have cool jobs and read books and who seem like both good contacts for me to have and people who have the potential to become actual friends. Good build-up to the rest of the night.

So then I booked it home, changed, grabbed my costume, and headed for rehearsal. When I got there, the Theatrician was hard at work choreographing the 12 cast members in our opening number. Amazing.

Anyway, I had this moment where I realized that everything I wanted and everything I worked for was materializing in front of my eyes and I felt LUCKY. And blessed, if we can go there. When La Directora said, "Let's show Bea what we've been working on!" and everyone showed me a carefully choreographed opening number for our show, I was in heaven.

Yes, we can. And we will. And we are.

Those moments make all the hard ones completely worth it. Is it sometimes hard to work two full time jobs--getting up early in the AM and ending the day with six more hours of work in-between which I am expected to pay close attention to another career? Yes. Is it sometimes overwhelming to stack show after show on top of one another? Yep.

But it is totally, totally rewarding in the meantime to see a show materialize, to find a new and very trusted collaborator (the director of the show I'm producing in July is an amazing woman), and to feel like what I am working towards may actually happen. Because I work hard, I want it to, and I have a great team of people standing behind me who believe in it and will make it so.