Today I committed to writing, or rather "arranging" one man show I started in my head years ago. Originally I was going to call it "Allergic to Life", but now I am leaning toward "Sobah", though I worry that Sobah might drive away potential attendees.
Of course, if I continue to sit on my hands, there will be no show for people to be driven from. The annoying thing is that this thing is really already written, I just need to put a few stand up bits together with my actual experience with alcoholism (which is probably funnier than my stand up), arrange it, work out the sense of what goes where, and VOILA! a one man piece.
The irksome thing about my sloithfulness around this is that I already know it would be damn good if I just did it. The individual stand up bits are all winners, tried and tested numerous times on varied audiences. The experiential pieces if my history- also verbalized to the delight of whack-jobs such as myself across the nation.
All that is missing is a little faith.
I saw an old friend of mine performing at his CD release party. I love this man's music. His perfomance inspired me to get rolling with my own art.
In the recesses of my mind there are dark whispers, foretelling of the premiere no one attends, except a few critics who (naturally) HATE the show, and of course, loathe me more than the show for writing and performing it. The same voices mumble about judgements and my ultimate failure and how many people will line up to tell me how lousy my show is.
Truthfully... I don't think people care enough to invest their time telling me I stink.
I have been ducking finishing this forever. Earlier in the week, I called my friend Dot to tell her I was planning on writing this baby today, and that I should have a full report on Friday. While I have a difficult time holding myself accountable, most of my good friends do not have this same problem. I know Dot will ask me how I made out Thursday, and if I start talking about poker tournament, instead of "Sobah", it will be a very short chat.
So, I plugged in the coffeemaker, whapped on my computer this morning and tried to start the day off right. I went to this cool website run by these sort of renegade Irish Jesuits called sacredspace.ie
They walk you through mroning thoughts and meditation & prayer. My meditation has been vacant, so I knew I needed some help today if I was going to stand a chance of actually doing what I said I would do.
Irinically, the opening thoughts utilized a poker analogy. God got my attention right away, the sneaky little nut. I'm telling you, this cat will go to any lengths... the rest of the thoughts to ponder involved utilizing the talents you have, checking with how close you are to God, and remembering times when you were closest, and about a zillion other things that hit me between the eyes.
So I am off to pour my first cuppa java and start to piece thits puppy together. I expect you guys to hold me accountable!