Last Updated on April 9, 2021 by Sammie
Feeling lost in life? No s***! Me too!
I don’t think anyone knows what they’re doing right now. If i may speak to the artist community, we’re all feeling lost at the moment. “Should I have moved to Vegas to train?” “Should I stay put at my parents place to save money?” “Should I try street performing?” “Maybe I’ll find a circus gym in Europe…”. I mean, if you know the right answer please let me know. Because the more I speak to people, the more we seem to be second guessing our decisions.
Too much of a good thing is always bad.
We’re busy, we want spare time. There’s nothing to do, we want work. You’re talking, please shut up. You get my point. This feeling is heavy and everyday I question what the point is. Everyday I question if I’m moving forward or simply waiting for my old life to be handed to me on a silver platter.
Though I consider myself a circus performer, that doesn’t mean I know what to do outside of the circus tent. I’m someone who needs direction. I crave structure. But short of my mom giving me a curfew if I move back in with her, that structure is gonna have to fall on me. And right now, I’m feeling lost with too much time to think so I’m going to choose a direction and start walking blindly.
What I’m saying is I’m not sitting around. Nobody is sitting around. Who knows, I might be walking in circles but there is no sitting. We are contacting who we know, we are training in parks, we are finding garages to hang our hoops, straps, and silks…but mostly we are searching for inspiration, something to grasp on to, because we (I) feel lost.
You say expect the unexpected. I say you can go…just please walk away.
In layman’s terms, think of it like preparing months in advance for a job interview without knowing what the job entails. How do you prep? Do you concentrate on your excel skills, or brag about how you coded your own blog? Voila. What the heck should I be doing right now?
The beauty of entertainment is the creativity and imagination. It inspires us to pursue things we didn’t believe were possible because we are seeing the impossible in front of our own eyes. But this inspiration that entertainment can bring needs to be fed at the beginning as well. And it is here where the struggle lives! All this time to train and create with little inspiration to draw from. It’s something we can all relate to, right? The entire day free from distraction, how’s that writing coming along? Have you learned spanish yet? How’s that scarf you’re knitting…for next winter.
A world that is on the brink of starting again, feeding a carrot here and there to the entertainment industry. Maybe one show in a few months, maybe a 2 month contract next winter. There’s not enough carrots to go around. And there might not be for a while.
Give yourself a break because we’re all feeling lost in uncharted territory.
I don’t know about you but this is my first pandemic. So I ask this; can we let go of a correct way to handle this? Compassion is needed now more than ever, for ourselves and for each other. We are tired and nervous and all we want is to make people smile and get back to performing. I want the world to go back to normal as much as the next guy but normal isn’t in view and I need to move forward. So I will put my mask on and train where I can. I will be cautious but also brave because unemployment sucks.
I will be kind to my self. Well, I’ll try. Because lately it’s more difficult to quiet the negativity in my head than to balance on one arm. We don’t need to know what to do right now. We just need to know things will change. There’s times where we have direction in our lives, then there’s times we need to accept chaos. This is that time. Feel lost and enjoy the ride because god only knows that the mundane would be worse.
If you feel like you don’t even know what life is right now, leave a comment below. Trust me, you’re not alone.
