The Paper Towel Moment

The brilliant and very funny Susan Leopold introduced me to The Paper Towel Moment. I had been having them all my life, but I never knew they had a name.

So what is a Paper Towel Moment? It’s when you’ve dealt really well with everything that life has thrown at you, but it’s the fact that you’re out of paper towels that sends you careening down a spiral of tears. It’s that normally-inconsequential event that opens the floodgates. For example…

The last six months have been a roller coaster for me. Lots of highs (some dear friends’ weddings, reunions with friends not seen in years), some lows (furloughed from a web start-up job I loved, having the flu for almost a month) and lots and lots of changes (finished grad school, moved across the country). I’ve dealt with it all really well, if I do say so myself. You see, I’m one of those people who believe that we choose where to put our energy and that those choices decide what happens in the future. So, if you choose to react in a positive way to a situation or challenge, then what happens subsequently is bound to be positive as well. Most of the time, anyway.

But this week the challenges just added up to be too much, and one put me over the edge. What could have caused such uncontrollable weeping in my Actors Work Program Career Counselor’s office? What unforeseen disappointment? What catastrophic let down?

My printer broke.

Yes, folks. What opened the dam of tears was nothing more than the technical failure of a 2+ year old piece of refurbished machinery. The proverbial paper towel of the Paper Towel Moment.

Those of you who know me well know that I cry very easily. Like at a strong wind, easily. And that I can cry a lot. (Doing Juliet Stevenson’s catharsis monologue from Truly, Madly, Deeply got me into graduate school.) But really, I am a very positive person and I deal with most things in stride.

I’ve just been coping with a lot. And when the printer broke and I couldn’t find the warrantee in all the boxes I have yet to unpack and I couldn’t print up cover letters for job applications and I couldn’t print up resumes for auditions and I couldn’t just run out and buy a new printer because the check from my freelance work was delayed again… I held it all together. Until I was sitting in that poor woman’s office and she told me to print something. Then it was batten down the hatches time.

So why am I sharing this personal and embarrassing story with you? Because I hope you have a Paper Towel Moment sometime. And if you’ve been coping with a lot, then I hope you have your PTM soon. We can’t go on forever with a stiff upper lip. You have to at some point in time acknowledge and express the stresses in your life and how they make you feel.

So go on. Have a PTM. Let those worries/fears/things-that-keep-you-up-at-night into the light of day. Let them out! And then let them go. Then you can get on with your life. Get back to focusing on the positive. Back to forging ahead.

Just don’t forget to clean up after the dam breaks. Perhaps with paper towels…

It’s the day of the show, y’all!

OK, it’s actually the day after the show (the National Theater Conservatory NYC showcase), but given the amount of sleep I’ve had, it might as well be the same day. We had a fantastic time with showcase, and I feel really good about the material we had. I did scenes from the movies His Girl Friday and Truly, Madly, Deeply, two favorite films of mine. The hope is that the two scenes showed many sides of me: Smart, saucy, sexy, funny in HGF and warm, sweet and emotionally available in TMD.

In the lingo of the field, I’m taking some meetings as a result of showcase, which, given the economy, is truly a blessing. I’ll keep my faithful readers (Hi, Mom!) posted.

In the mean time, I’m really enjoying being back in NYC – rain and everything. I just wish I weren’t so addicted to the internet: I spent hours today trying to find a free connection somewhere. But more on that later.