The One with the Little Voice.

In New York right now, it's not what you would call "audition season." In fact, it's quite the opposite; it's the slowest time of the year for auditions. I knew this was the case before I came out here and I figure these three or so months that I'm here before "audition season"(August/September/October) will give me the chance to ease my way in, auditioning here and there and letting myself get to know the city. Since most of my days here are fairly open for the time being, there's really no excuse for me not to keep up with my blog every couple of weeks or so. I do, after all, really enjoy writing and sharing my thoughts and adventures.

I've had several amazing and difficult discoveries since my last entry. The most thundering one being this: nothing about this place is easy. (Except finding and purchasing food... that's far TOO easy. It's everywhere.) It's not easy to get anywhere. It's not easy to audition. It's not easy to run errands. It's not easy to make time to visit a friend, even though you're completely surrounded by hundreds of thousands of people all the time. It's not easy to walk a block without wanting or needing to push someone out of your way. It's not easy to be in a hurry. It's not easy to get somewhere on time. It's not easy to keep your hair in the same state it was in when you left your house. It's not easy to sleep. It's not easy to cool off. It's not easy to afford it. It's just not easy. It's not only not easy, it's just plain hard.

When I became conscious of this fact, I had a moment. A moment of "Is this really where I want to be?" A moment of "Am I out of my mind?" A moment of "I want my mom."

By the time I get home at night, I am exhausted, even if I've only done two things all day long. When I wake up in the morning, I have to pry my eyes open and have a serious conversation with myself about whether sleeping an extra hour would be a good idea or not.

I was talking to a friend the other night and expressing this recent awakening. In that moment, I smiled to myself as a little voice in my head said, "True, but every single time you do succeed, it will be so much more rewarding."

I went to an audition yesterday fully prepared and was told after sitting there for four hours that the casting director had decided that he wasn't seeing non-Equity audigoogtions. I'd been told that this might happen, so I thought I had mentally prepared myself. But as I was walking back to the train with the same materials in my backpack that I'd had four hours earlier, I just got outright mad. The anger stirred in me for the half-hour, sweaty, humid, squished-in trip back to my apartment. I even let out a guttural, frustrated yell when I closed my bedroom door. I was hot. I'd put on a skirt and heels and stayed up extra-late the night before tweaking my audition cut and perfecting my résumé for nothing.

Then that little voice came to me again: "True, but every single time you do succeed, it will be so much more rewarding."

I pondered on that for a minute more. It's very common for us to look at the people succeeding as performers and say, "I want that. Why do they have it and I don't?" It's very easy to envy someone who is currently experiencing the triumphs and accomplishments we dream of. The truth is, they have it because they've likely gone through some (or all) of the same things. They went to their share of auditions where they weren't seen. They braved the streets on humid days. They stayed up late preparing auditions. They probably, perhaps angrily, slugged their way back to their homes and apartments with a heavy heart and felt the frustrations I felt. They took the odd jobs, the opportunities that maybe paid less than others. They said yes. They worked hard. They persisted and then one day, it paid off. They were rewarded for the hard work. That was a powerful thought. What's also powerful is knowing that people can succeed in different ways. There are so many different roads and so many different destinations.

No, nothing about this place is easy. There will be days when I want crawl into a hole and let myself be mad about it. There will be days when the difficulty seems normal. There will be days when I will relish in the difficulty. I chose this. I still choose this. I loved this. I still love this. I'm growing as a person. I am SO happy. And as long as I am happy, as long as I choose it and love it, as long as I'm progressing, I know I am in the perfectly right place.

I really, really love New York. How could I not?