Change is gonna come

 I am beyond stressed. With my work for Byzantine U, my prep for the High Holidays, my need to declutter and repair and clean and paint my house to sell, my need to find a new house home, my need to care for my family and friends, my worries about the looming election and the national and world events- I am beyond stressed.

Something must change. Change will come, is coming. Some of the change I can choose, direct, guide, and some I cannot. 

I am sometimes having difficulty knowing which changes I can direct, and which changes are outside of my control.

I know that I need changes in my life. I feel stalled. What used to bring me joy finds me indifferent now. Most of my life is flat and stale.

Maybe I need a complete change of direction, purpose, career, focus. 

I could become a cycologist, right? 

I have been an actor, director, producer, educator, waitress, program coordinator, journalist. I've been on so many boards as president, VP, chair, secretary, and more. 

I know I'm good at my work as an educator, and I enjoy working with my students- but I have to force myself to make the connections, do the grading, post the assignments.

I'm good at organizing programs and designing and coordinating events- but here too I find I lack interest, initiative, motivation.

I am stalled. Not drifting, exactly- I'm still getting the necessary tasks done, although at the 11th hour and the 59th minute.

Gotta love deadlines.

Tonight is Kol Nidre, the evening that we enter into the Day of Atonement. The Kol Nidre prayer itself is a petition to the Eternal to be excused from oaths that were made under duress, obligations that we took on or promises that we made against our heart's desire or our own truth.

We ask that, as the New Year begins, we can enter freely to a future that is not controlled by our past.

My past has influenced me, and much of that is good. However I cannot stay in the past; I have to move forward.

May this New Year have tender and sustaining memories of the good of the past- and also beginnings and discoveries.

I am a different person now. 

what am I supposed to do?

I am having another of those moments of existential angst.

Or, another series.

I have founded two youth theater groups. Both are still active-- the younger one, for older kids, about to celebrate its tenth anniversary is quite active, the older one, for younger (and older) kids, is about to celebrate its eighteenth anniversary. The older one (for younger kids) has been less active in recent years, while the younger one (for older kids) has been quite active.

None of my own biological children has been in a show in a number of years now.

So why am I still doing it?

I'm not getting paid-- I get an occasional stipend, which would not even cover mileage (if I were to charge mileage).

I believe in the power of young people as artists. I believe in the power of theater to transform lives.

But my faith is being challenged lately.

Since the "poisonous comedy" referenced in 2008, I have had more challenges in the culture of the organizations I have founded. Parents objecting to the material (well, if you don't think your 12 year old should be exposed to Shakespeare, so be it-- take 'em out!).

Young people treating the group as a social club -- to the point that the artistic endeavor suffers.

And young persons and older persons disrespecting me, the material and the process.

This is not what I signed on for.

At the same time, I will find -- in the same production-- that theater, my directing, Shakespeare-- some combination of these-- has changed a young person's life for the better.

All at the same time.

The tentative plan I have now is: meet with the core group of teens. Tell them how much I have been hurt. Tell them how much I believe. Ask them to join me with whole hearts.

Or leave. Leave now. Create your own group!

Or-- I could retire.

2010 could be a watershed year. Either re-invent ourselves. Or make our exits gracefully.