Dancing, drama, and disappointment

 I was feeling pretty blue last evening.  For one thing, I've got all these medical tests to take to determine what caused the weird passing out incident a few nights ago.  Although I feel fine in my body, I feel fragile in my spirits.  And then there's all the ongoing political tensions.  I have a vivid and disturbing picture in my imagination (and may it stay there!) of bands of Republicans or unaffiliated thugs attacking Dems at polling places on election day.  Trump is a failure at most aspects of life (including, apparently, finances), but he is a master at sowing doubt and discord.

Also, my play Holy Hell, possibly my most powerful, was performed digitally last night, and it was a terrible disappointment.  There were tech difficulties, very distracting.  But more than that, the actors used a very narrow range of emotional colors.  The woman had one moment that felt like true emotion, but otherwise it felt rushed and flat.  It didn't make me cry, which is telling.  I was embarrassed that I had invited so many people to watch it, and even to donate to it.  These digital performances (7 or 8 so far) are just too universally disappointing, the one exception being the reading of Familiar Kill by a group in London.  I don't think I'm going to invite my peeps to watch them any more.  I had had high hopes for this one because the play lends itself so well to the Zoom format, but those hopes, while not dashed, were not met.  Sigh.

Anyway, when I'm blue, dancing is often a good way to get out of my head and into a sweeter place, so I put on some Peter Gabriel and danced my ass off, something I haven't done for a while.  And as I was moving, I had the thought that I probably could have been a good dancer.  I seem to have a feel for it and love doing it, almost any kind.  When I took my first African dance class several years ago, one of the drummers said to me "You've done this a lot, haven't you", and didn't believe me when I said it was my first time.  If I had stayed with it, even though I don't have a dancer's body type and even though I'm not naturally limber, I think I might have been really good.  If I had stayed with it.  If I had given it my all.

And that got me thinking that I haven't really given my all to anything.  There are a lot of aspects of myself which have never been developed as fully as they could have been because I didn't give them one hundred per cent, because I haven't given anything one hundred per cent.  Not acting, not writing, not dancing, not school, not leadership, not anything.

Except my family, my husband, and my best friends.  To them, I give everything I have and everything I am.  That must be where my focus has always been, even if I've spent a years thinking it ought to be elsewhere.  But it is here on the people I love and who populate my life.  So at least I can say I give my all somewhere.  That's something.