Personal Angst

Why am I finding it so impossibly hard to just sit down and write my personal statement for Ph.D. applications? That should be one of the easiest parts, shouldn't it? It's just two to three pages about me and what I am interested in and what I want to do. It should not be hard to just sit down and churn something out. And yet it is. I had the same problem when filling out my grad school applications, too.

And the thing is, it's not that I don't know what I want to do. I mean, there are still quite a few areas where I'm vague, but I know enough. I know that even though my background at this point is fairly equally balanced between classical and modern theatre, I prefer contemporary theatre to anything else (this despite my summer-long immersion in Shakespeare). I know that I get a huge rush from directing and that I'd like to direct new plays or modernized classics. But I also know that while I often enjoy modernized Shakespeare or modernized classical theatre, I don't like when people screw around with Tennessee Williams or Arthur Miller or any plays that are still relatively new because I want to see those ones as I feel the playwright intended them to be performed (and no, I DON'T know why I hate the one but don't mind the other). I like expressionism and surrealism and symbolism but get easily annoyed with absurdism, despite the fact that they are all pretty similar in a lot of ways. I want to teach college, and if given a choice I'd love to teach dramatic theory or any theatre history course. Part of the reason I want to be a professor is that I presume by doing so I'll have time for my own research and writing, which I enjoy even as I bitch about it endlessly. I especially enjoy researching productions. I love to travel and hope that my future will include a lot of it, whether it's for research or teaching a study abroad course or whatever. I flirt with the idea of theatre management or being an artistic director and I think it would be awesome to do season planning and discover new playwrighting talent. I am also recently obssessed with the idea of making theatre more accessible to the public, making it both more affordable and more appealing. I am particularly obsessed with the idea of making theatre more accessible to young people. I don't want anyone in this country to have to wait until college (much less first have to have the opportunity to go to college in the first place) to see their first "real" live performance. I don't want anyone to believe that "theatre" only means stuffy Shakespeare and The Crucible. I don't know how I personally am going to help accomplish this goal, but it is something I've been thinking about a lot lately.

How is it that I can write all that here in less than twenty minutes but I can't make it articulate and format it into a statement of purpose? Ugh. Maybe that's a start at least. Maybe. At least I typed up my CV today and managed to do some research for my paper that is due on Thursday, so I haven't been a total slacker.

And because I actually did some work today, I can now play videogames for a couple of hours guilt-free. On Thursday morning at work I got to talking to the kitchen boys about videogames [Incidentally, I'm still not all that close to most of the other servers. We get along at work and we chat but I don't hang out with any of them outside of work but a lot of them hang out with each other so I always end up feeling a little bit out of the loop. Since I have no desire to be sleeping with anyone I work with and since that seems to be what everyone else is into--that and constant drinking--I don't really mind being a little out of the loop. And I'm not the only one in my position, there is a definite divide between the "lifers" who have been working there for a really long time and don't do anything else and those of us who are students and only work a few shifts a week. There are a lot more lifers than part-timers, though, hence my feeling out of the loop. But enough about restaurant politics, the point I was going to make is that I don't feel close to any of the servers but the kitchen boys love me for some reason]. I mentioned to the guys that I've beaten a few Zelda games and really like Guitar Hero and DDR and any game where you race cars and any game with cute characters and all puzzle games, and somehow they decided that they could take this minor interest in videogames and turn it into a full-blown addiction. I tried to explain that I'd dated a serious gamer for three years and while that certainly got me interested in gaming it never turned into an obssession and if that didn't turn me into a gamer nothing would, but they wouldn't listen to me. And that's why Martin showed up to work on Friday morning with an Xbox and his copy of Halo and threw it all into the back of my car when I got to work and said, "There. Practice on easy mode, learn how to talk shit, and soon you'll be playing with us all the time." And that's how I ended up playing Halo for over an hour last night and why I've been telling myself all day that if I could get some real work done I could play some more. I hate to admit it, but there's something incredibly cathartic and almost soothing about obliterating aliens. Plus the music is really cool. I can't say that this is the start of an addiction, but Carlos is supposed to bring me more games at work tomorrow, and I have to admit I'm kind of excited.

I just wish they'd waited to start my "training" until next week, because it was hard enough to buckle down and work on these stupid applications and papers before.

Anyway, I think I'm gonna go to the Christmas fair here in town and have some campfire biscuits and hot chocolate for dinner. I've been out with my friends all weekend (dinner and drinks at Outback last night and checking out the new Irish pub in town followed by Rocky's and post-last call drinking at my apartment afterwards on Thursday) so I'm a little tired and think that will be all for me tonight. I can't wait until next weekend, when hopefully I'll have nothing to do.