Conference was good, I think I had more fun this year thant I did last but thats not hard. I really wasn't happy this time last year, I was dealing with things I really didn't want to deal with at all, none of which had anything to do with conference or either show I was just deal with thing them...or not dealing with them depending on how you look at it.

I'm realizing, though, how much I've reverted. I don't do anything anymore, I go to school I come home, if there's a play going on I'm doing that but I don't have a social life like I have in the past. No one calls. I don't bother to call anyone. It doesn't really bother me until I start to think about it. Even now I'm not bothered enough to do anything about it...except I think it's making me depend too much on Jim to make/keep me happy. Thats not his job. He shouldn't feel like he has to compliment me everytime we talk but I ask him to, I expect him to, I flatout ask him. He's never been like this, I know it but all of the sudden I need it more and I wind up getting pissy and being that girlfriend that I don't want to be but I keep doing it. I regret it as soon as the conversation is over but I do it the next time I talk to him. I feel like everytime we talk I just make him feel guilty for being himself. I stop myself from calling because I know there will be that point in the conversation and I don't like myself for that,I wouldn't want to be in the receiving end of that. I don't know why I put him through that. I just need to stop...maybe if I did I wouldn't have to ask anymore. Maybe bot, but I don't want him to feel like that because of me.

Back to conference and off me being a stupid girl... Once again UnTheatre was the best workshop I went to...I actually went to it twice...I remember it being fun last year and I got the idea about the world being your stage and the holy theatre and such and it was nice and beth an derek were coo. but... this year they ended with this speech about following your passion...how no matter what you're fighting for be it the abolishment of the elctoral college or better schools or working conditions or a pants-free workplace-whatever. You can do it. You have to and you have to now beacuse in 20 years that fire will be gone if you don't feed it. It might already be dying... It's a frightening thought. I used to think I had all the time in the world...I don't. I used to think I could plan for defeat and still suceed...I can't. So it looks like I have to take a one in a million shot and follow this. I want to be a writer. I love writing. I love finishing a story, searching for a word, having it read and understood...not liked, not appreciated, I just need them to get it...even just mostly...

but there's this other thing now. I was watching Medea saturday night and it took everything in me not to jump on stage and start saying the lines. She wasn't doing it right...It's not bias on my part or jealousy because she really was and I don't want to admit it...maybe it's bias but I was only jealous because she was up there and not me. Not because she was better. I don't even think I was that great but I think I had it more than that. I know I did. Its not hubris or arrogance... I know I did. I knew that character. For how ever many hours I rehearsed and preformed- I was that character. She was me. I don't like talking like that usually. I don't talk like that usually. I know how this is all coming off but noone, excepting Jimmy is reading it, and I know he'll still love me even if he thinks I'm being a diva...hopefully. Or at the very least he'll tell me.

Maybe if I didn't know Medea so well. Maybe if it wasn't one of my favorite plays. Maybe if it wasn't the best thing I've ever done. Moreover maybe it if wasn't one of the only worthwhile things I've done ever done. I mean I don't get many things right. I, infact, get most everything horribly wrong... but I had that. No one can take that show away from me. Not Krissy standing during greenroom and telling everyone that she'd stolen the show or telling me during the Cappies show that I was over-acting. Not the people I asked to come that missed it. Not the Cappies describing me like a horse. Not Lynch refusing to talk to me. Not half the cast being afraid to talk to me. That was mine. At least that character was. And I was insulted watching this girl on stage, because she was a girl, just a girl pretending to be a woman scorned. Medea isn't crazy- you cannot act crazy. It's cartoonish. It's fake. It's an insult to the playwright and every actress thats stood up there before you and poured everything they were into her to make it believable. Maybe I care too much about all of this and it doesn't really matter. But it does to me. This is too close to me not to matter.

During the show Eric was sitting next to be, as bothered by Medea as I was and he turned to me and said that if Medea hadn't been his first show...If I hadn't been her, had it been someone else playing her like this girl was he wouldn't have stayed in theatre. He told me he felt sorry for the kids that came after that show and only get to hear about it because they don't know and he told me how in awe he was of me any my control over the character and how he really believed me and Justin up on stage. He could see that passion in us. It made him have it too. I've never been the reason anyone did anything. I think actually I drive people away. I know people have quit the paper because they don't want to deal with me. Thats who I'm used to being and that Eric said that just meant so much and it was so hard not to cry right then and it's really hard to see the screen because I'm crying right now. I know he wasn't trying to make me feel better. He meant it. I knowJim would laugh and joke about how much I shamelessly love getting compliments and he's right. I do love them when they're honest. And it's so rare that someone just tells me something like that without provocation. He didn't need to tell me that. Its like when Jimmy turns to me, looks at me like he's doing it for the first time and tells me that I'm beautiful- like it just occured to me, like there is nothing else that could come out of his mouth then, no matter what he was going to say that's what he had to because he felt it so strongly, like he's just that lucky to be around me... granted they're completely different situations and completely different people but ultimately it does the same thing to me. I don't give away compliments so when I get one that's earnest I can't help but be completely moved by it.

This weekend is making me wonder if I want to just give up after Blithe. I still want to major in English but I don't think I can ever just seperate myself from the theatre. I may only ever do community work but something. I need to do something.

It occurs to me now( I say that a lot, as if things I've known all along are just now hitting me. really it's just a poorly chosen transition) that I have rambled on much more than I usually do... I think this will happen more often now that only one person besides me has the password...he has to deal with me rambling anyway. I figure he's used to it by now.