Anxiety: It's a Dilly of a Pickle

I did my monologue for theatre the other day. While I'm sure I got a good grade, I feel like I failed. I spent time beforehand practicing, making faces at certain parts, and making specific descriptive motions. I had it down, man. But when I got up there in front of the class, anxiety took over. Sure, I remembered all my lines (thus why I probably got a good grade) and did most of the motions I practiced, but I feel my anxiety held me back and rendered my performance unconvincing.

They say the only way to get over your fears is to face them. The thing about this is, it only works if you face them and then have a positive or at least neutral experience. So if you're afraid to drive, then one day you take out the car and crash it and kill seven people, that's not going to help your fear of driving any, it only makes it worse. Trust me, I beat myself up over what I deemed was a bad performance, because beating myself up is what I do. I can't help it. I do it with a lot of things, where I think about them over and over again and cringe and say spirits (my calming word).

So there are two problems here, two forms of anxiety, neither of which respond to logic. My anxiety doesn't do me any good, at least none that I can see. It only causes me problems. Yet, I can't just turn it off because things don't work that way. The first form of anxiety is my fear of people. The second form is the beating up of myself. I could have focused on the positives, like how I remembered all my lines and made good gestures. But I focus on the negatives.

So this leaves me in a dilly of a pickle. I really don't know what the solution is. Facing my fears reinforces them, doing nothing does nothing. And drugs won't even work! Because the drugs that kill or ease anxiety lead to drowsiness and slurred speech, two things that will also kill a performance.

I could give up acting, that wouldn't be a problem, except that I know that my anxiety problem will do more than just hinder an acting career. If I were to become famous for my book, and someone invited me on a television show, I would be too nervous to do a decent interview, especially if it was filmed in front of an audience. Any social encounter in which I have a vested interest in making a good impression could be destroyed by my anxiety.

So that's why I can't give up. Therefore, I will take acting again next semester.

Semi-Lucid Dreams and Acting

I woke up around 3 am last night feeling wide awake, so I did what I usually do in this situation, which was switch to the other bed in my room. It worked, I fell back asleep. The downside of this is tactic is that in the morning I have twice as many beds to make.

I had this dream, which was lucid or semi-lucid (I'm not sure if dreams can be considered semi-lucid). At the beginning I was shown a picture of this guy named Charlie, who was going to be my future lover. He had long, dark, very curly hair that was big and went everywhere. Not the kind of guy I'd usually be into, but I didn't think he was that unattractive. Then I was on a mission to find him. Along the way, I met this guy who asked me what kind of drug I don't smoke. I said I didn't smoke crack. So he handed me a cocaine cigarette, I don't think people smoke cocaine in rolled-up cigarette form in real life but they did in my dream. I smoked it and it made me feel interesting, though probably not how it would in real life. In real life I've done cocaine a few times but never when I wasn't under the influence of alcohol. I like it how when you do drugs in dreams they make you feel different. For the rest of the dream I kept doing things and having to run away, except something about it was different than my other running away dreams. I think other running dreams stem from the desire to run away and do destructive things. But in this dream, I was the one who was right. Which might sound wrong considering I was smoking a cocaine cigarette, but in this dream that wasn't considered a bad thing, it was a socially accepted drug like nicotine or even caffeine.

Charlie was the name of a character in the play I saw last weekend. The actor who played him did a ridiculously good job I thought and he is also in my acting class. He did a monologue in front of the class on Monday, and he did a ridiculously good job then too.

Which makes me think of my own acting. I don't know how good I am or if I'm even good at all, I really wonder about this. But I feel the need not to fail at acting. I don't mean not fail the class, I'm sure even someone who completely sucked at acting could get a passing grade in the class if they made an effort. I'm not going to make a career out of acting, but I'd like it to be something I'm reasonably good at. I have to do my own monologue next Monday.

I remember the reason I decided to do acting in the first place. Part of the reason was because it's something I'm interested in, but it was also because I thought I could play myself if my book were made into a movie, because I feel it will be turned into a movie. The advantage I have is that I know how I act and carry myself, and I experienced the events of the book myself. The disadvantage is that I'd have to act convincingly drunk and cry on command.

Religious Insects, Musical Delusions, and the Big Empty Future

So here I am at the local college. I have a 3-hour study session before my first sociology class. So I do a little bit of text book reading. Reading about sociology makes me think of the computer game I programmed in high school. It was basically a society of bugs, a bug life simulation game, the bugs faced many challenges but the most notable of which was that they had religions. Anyway, I start thinking about that, and I am full of ideas of how I could improve it. Or just start over and program it all over again, with the same basic idea of a society of bugs, but I can make it cooler and totally different. I mean, that was eight years ago when I started working on it. I could make it totally cooler now.

What am I going to do with my life? I know the reason I am shying away from pursuing a degree in computer science is because I don't want to be stuck in a monotonous coding job. Creating a bug game was creative. I want to create my own computer games. Intelligent computer games. There are too many shoot-em-up games out there.

But I also feel this drive to be famous. And I don't just want 15 minutes of fame, I want to stay famous. And I don't know why I want this, but I do. Maybe it's the kind of thing that once I have it I won't want it anymore. But for some reason, being a famous author seems like the most realistic goal I have right now.

I'd also like to dabble in acting. Like, they could make my book into a movie and I could play myself. Then they couldn't say that I didn't have the right look for the part because I look absolutely perfect for the role because it's me. Except I have no acting experience. But it's never too late to start, right? That was my dream when I was really young, to be an actress. In fact, when I was young I knew I was going to grow up to be famous, and I thought it was going to be because I was going to be an actress. It was just like, I had this feeling like I was someone important, someone whom other people would be interested in.

And then I want to dabble in music. I wanted to turn my life into a musical. Or at least the part that had to do with me becoming delusional. And I wrote some songs, with lyrics and everything, and I thought they were good. Sometimes I have a talent for poetry. Except when you write poetry for songs, you have to mix up the rhythms more, or else all your songs will sound the same.

What else do I want to do? Why, I'd like to become Buddhist. Maybe even a Buddhist monk, and then I can teach other Buddhists. Actually, I don't know that much about Buddhism, but from what I know it's probably the most fitting spiritual path for me.

And there are more things I want to do, like write more. So the problem is, none of these really seem that attainable right now, the closest one is getting a published book, but that's not a permanent career. So if I had a clear idea of what I wanted to do, I could focus on that and move full force in that direction, and maybe I would get somewhere. Except I don't know what I want to do because I want to do everything, so I can't focus. So I'm left unemployed and in a program, and the future is just this big blank spot in my mind.