the lonely life

So here we are at the weekend. And as seems to be the custom of so many silly moments, I scan through the Facebook feed to see all that my friends have planned for the next three days. I have a relatively quiet weekend, a few things, but plenty of hours to make use of my current infatuation with writing. And yet… much though I am rather intoxicated with the yet to be determined plot of this scene collection I am churning out… I feel almost like I am missing out on a few things.

I decided to make one of my main characters a writer… so maybe that naturally lends itself to thinking about how it shapes a person. Writing is a private enterprise. Well, private in the initial stages. Obviously, one has to be enormously social to sell her material… but I’m not there yet.

And I’m not… as social as I once was. I have become so much more of a homebody. Maybe Facebook is a warped mirror, but it is an interesting reflection to see all these plots and gatherings of which I am not a part. I well imagine if I asked, I could certainly partake of some of these… and I also know that some are a collection of friends from whom I have deliberately withdrawn over the past two years.

Because I became a writer.

It is a juxtaposition to my other art – theater – wherein I was never at home, never finding time to clean my space, do laundry, or… write. I was hosting parties, attending parties, and always, always, always spending several nights a week at the theater – either rehearsing or supporting other peoples’ performances. Which, in turn, led to outings and dinners and karaoke and being surrounded by people all the time.

The weird thing is… I like people more now than I did then. Is that weird? Is it just a testimony to absence making the heart grow fonder? Or the idea that while you are in the constant motion of company, you take it for granted… take it for granted and allow petty irritations to blind self to the beauty of another soul.

So here’s the thing. I confess a bit of the lonely pang in the last couple months. I have contemplated the remedy to this by going back into theater. But the one thing that stops me, the all important detail, is that I don’t want to go back and take people for granted. I don’t want to slip into the ease of mean conversation that frequents the green room and post show drinks. I want to constantly see the beauty of my friends, of their emotions, of their art. And I know writing has given me the spectacles with which to clarify my focus of all that is great about human beings, even the awesomeness of their flaws. Theater… is smoke and mirrors and illusion. In other words, I have to take those glasses off.

So… I don’t know… is it possible to have the best of both worlds? I don’t think so. That’s not how life works. You can appreciate the brevity of life and the precious opportunity of each little moment… but you have to live with the depression that it could all end abruptly. Or you can numb yourself to that reality… and be okay with the world, but not see the shimmering light of each chance because you convince yourself there will always be another.

And lonely though the writing life is, I feel truer to myself than I ever was as a thespian. I miss it. Oh God I miss it. And I will probably succumb sooner or later. But… sometimes it is nice to be on the outside looking in, watching people (even if it is on Facebook) and seeing the joy to which they are themselves blind.