There was a point in time when I thought I knew what I was going to do with the rest of my life. The Acting: oh, how much was I in love? So much so that I was willing, eager, to look forward to the Oscars every year, the Actor's Roshashana, notebook in hand so that I might make lists about vulgarities such as which character actor was being ignored for the Best Supporting award over some Hollywood newbie and what awkwardly glamorous updo worked best on a long face (I have a long face. Gathering data about hairstyles is important when you're twenty and In Love.) I was going to be Helen Mirren- no offense intended, Helen (Dame Mirren and I are old friends [clearly that is a lie.]) I was going to be big, a Big Stah, so that I could work with the other Big Stahs that made my heart flutter when I watched their hearts flutter onscreen. It was sympathy fluttering: we were all a-flutter, and I was convinced to my marrow that this was because I was destined to become one of Them, contorting my face in just the right way for the close-ups, stomping my foot on the boards during breaks in filming future classics like Out of Africa Two: Showers Save Water, doing interviews for magazines. Because magazines featured in my dreaming, because I'm old.
Well, I'm old enough. For what, you ask? That's an excellent question, and I'm glad you asked!...what I seem to be really good at- in such a way that I barely recognize I'm doing it- is being dissatisfied. I live in England so I'm in some good company: 60 million of we Brits (or Non-British Residents, or Immigrant Scum according to EUKIP, Great Britain's counter to America's Tea Party, whom I would call a bunch of twats if it weren't an insult to vaginas) enjoy nothing more than a good bout of complaining. Besides everything being too expensive and the world being run by a bunch of lying beaurocrats who are in danger of being overthrown by a bunch of crazed "God is our Cannon" despots, I personally have a good deal to complain about. Blah blah pain blah acting gone, blah paperwork blah blah Fibrofog which is just like chemofog or fiftieth-hangover-in-a-rowfog blah homesick. I periodically try to cut through all the blah by finding some direction, something that will be simple enough so that I can get my marmalade-thick thoughts around it and will be flexible so that when I'm done tending to my special needs genius child and my special needs genius husband and my ADHD young dog and my aggressive shithead old dog I can whiz through it. But whiz through what? There are so many things to consider!
I could:
- become a librarian. I'd be surrounded by books all the friggin' time, and I love to read! Reading is awesome, so awesome that's it's fundamental (TM)!...Except: to get hired you have to get a masters in Library Science, and then you'd be making some ridiculous pittance so that you could travel around in a non-company car (meaning Your Own, or perhaps Some Bus, and good luck with that) to different underfunded libraries so that you can do their paperwork. And the student loans would affect you and your child and your children's children, on to the seventh generation (maybe THAT is what Sitting Bull was talking about: he saw the future of student financing and was trying to warn us. It wasn't about the environment at all! Or maybe it was! Either way, we really screwed the pooch on that one.)
-teach Acting. Being honest here- and not in a shithead sort of way- I was good at acting. There are people who said I was great at it, and the fact that they were my paid teachers had nothing to do with how their opinions were formed. So it would be gratifying to pass along my sacred knowledge, to teach the youngsters what it means to compare pictures of your own face with others pictures of their own faces FOR HOURS, and to create endless and meaningless Improv games where everyone has to learn how to wander around the room like seaweed. Hey, someone did that to me, so it's just PAYBACK...Ok, I think I see the problem here.
-go to School, to Learn Stuff. Learning is amazing and really the reason we're all here on the planet; the fact that the majority of us in the developed world choose to learn about Kim and Kanye's Million-Dollar Malibu Barbie Dream Brothel with Hydrolic-Lift Rotating Champagne Room for their l'il baby is not the point: there are those who learn well, who learn how to speak French or Mardarin, who learn how to chop wood and install solar arrays and molecular biology so that they can stop the seven-strains-from-now virus that causes Ebola Extreme (although I just can't imagine Ebola any extremer. Also I don't want to. Just show me where to donate, OK? Then let me get back to what Anne Hathaway isn't eating this year.) And, and, and- in theory, I could be one of those Learners, the kind that might do some good with the knowledge. But:...well, the obvious thing is that it costs money, and I hate that. The other is, I suppose, self-doubt. What would I study? French? Mandarin? Psychology, which would be fascinating? And what the hell would I do with a degree when I was done- get a job? Please. People whose undying aspiration was to counsel disturbed French-speaking Chinese nationals, and who studied with fervor and discipline, cannot get a job slinging hash. Or ludes. Nothing, with the exception of crystal meth, and we all know where that leads because we've all seen Breaking Bad. Yikes. Besides, I believe I also have ADHD. And Marfan Syndrome, a deficiency of the connective tissues, which I already have but Marfan is that to the second degree and is therefore somehow that much more interesting. Plus POTS, which stands for PostCradial Orthopeodic Tum-Tum Systemcism, also a problem with the connective tissues but more localized to the left and sometimes right hemerfemurs. I have way too much to learn about my weird body and why it might or might not do a thing, thank you very much.
-Raise Money for Charity. This is a big thing in England- BIG. If you're not raising money for charity, some charity, even something as silly as The Northwest Canine Feel-Goodery Faction (money to help get underprivileged dogs aromatherapy massages) or as banal as HanddOip! (Buckinghamshire's program to provide esteem-raising workshops in handshaking for homeless persons,) then you are effectively a Wanker, no matter how much good you do in your actual life. Don't get me wrong, I am all for some fund-raising and have done a bit of it myself in the past, but the Brits are just bonkers about it. If some news weather presenter isn't daily killing herself a little bit by running so long and kayaking so hard that she pees out a fraction of her own liver, then the People of Great Britain just don't feel as good about themselves. They are ashamed, because being ashamed of themselves is something they do quite well (I expect that comes with having once been a gigantic Empire and subsequently having learned that in becoming said Empire you were quite a bunch of assholes. Not that, as an American, I'd have any idea what that felt like.)
Snarkiness aside, I have to say that the national mania for funraising is pretty cool. It may even provide some direction for me, finally and hoo-frickin'-ray! To that end I might as well announce that I intend to have a fund-raiser of my very own, inspired by my Aunt Julie (who is in much the same sort of situation I am in, physically, and who came up with the idea) and by my lack of athletic ability (self-explanatory.) On the weekend May 31st I'm going to have a one-woman Read-a-Thon, in honor of my parents, Clem and Kathy Biddle. The money raised will go to the McMillan Cancer Group. There, I said it.
Now to load up on some books!
