In Character

Hello, friend. Thank you for joining me here!

If you’re new, a little background: I recently moved with my husband and daughter from just outside New York City, where we acted in plays, television shows and movies, to a farmhouse on seven acres in rural Minnesota that currently has no shower, nor a complete kitchen. It does have small rodents, frogs, and enough renovation projects to fill my every waking moment for the next decade. Somehow, despite the fact that I’m more of a Ritz Carlton kind of gal, I am fairly ok with all of this, and I’m trying to figure out why. A thought has lately occurred to me: I wonder if my brain thinks this is a play? I mean, it is possible that I am going to wake up some morning after the standard theatrical contract should have ended—say 3 months from now—and suddenly realize that I am not playing a woman who moved away from NYC to a farm in God’s Country and now bathes outside and plants apple trees and enjoys the adventure of it all, but that I must now be that woman. For all the time. Without intermission. I am thinking this wake up call, if it indeed happens, will likely coincide with winter. If anything takes the romance out of country life, it is probably a wind chill of 30 below zero. I really don’t know if I am currently living in a fantasy state or not, because the deceptive thing is, I am actually trained to radically change my reality every time I take on a new job—usually a couple times per year. That’s one of the parts of my work I love most: entering a different (fictional) world and taking up residence for a time. It’s fascinating to learn about lives and times that are different from mine, and it is a blissful escape from anything that warrants escape in my own life. I relish it. I’m good at it. I like being other people. You can see how I might be fooling myself right here in this non-fiction, new life. Fooling myself is kind of what I do. So, I have started looking for evidence to determine my true level of countryside consciousness.

You have heard a lot in my previous posts about some of the not-so-nice surprises and challenges here—namely a house that needs tremendous amounts of work, critters that would like to take up residence with us, and our struggles with water and the lack thereof. I have also seen more political views different from my own, and especially this year, that’s a tough one to embrace. This County is farmland, though the little town in which we technically reside is a peace/love/harmony blue dot in the red-ish landscape. Seeing Trump signs line the land makes me so incredibly sad and disillusioned. And maybe those people feel that way, too—though I think they might characterize it differently. I have lived my entire life in urban areas like NYC and LA, and in college towns. These are places with great diversity and higher numbers of college educated professionals and artists like me. Spoiler: I do not handle conflict well, unless someone is hurting my kid, at which point you better hope I’m not holding a sharp object. I am not used to directly confronting—or being confronted by—Americans on the other end of the idealogical spectrum. This has been partially by design, as I take it all so incredibly personally that it costs me way more than I chose to pay on a daily basis to fight about it with others. I fight more privately through voting, donating, signing, educating myself, and raising a daughter who understands that we must take care of and celebrate women, people of color, trans people, gay people, and black people. One of the things my husband says all the time is that our votes will count more here. Friend, this is Michele Bachmann’s district, and we are here for it. But…*if* the unthinkable happens in November (which I don’t even want to think about), but, *if* it does, I will most definitely look at this area differently. Right now I see the signs from the other side and think, “Not this time.” But…I’m not sure how I could relate kindly to anyone that purposefully re-installed this administration. I am watching my language carefully right now, but I don’t know how I’d be able not to hate them.

Uhg.

That feels pretty awful to admit.

Because the whole point is that I am against hate, you know? I am against discrimination and inequality and cruelty and indifference. I’m not proud to say that it is hard for me to imagine extending the kind of tolerance I preach to those who would steal it from others. There’s the rub. Living here will certainly give me a greater opportunity to face that hypocricy in me, and there is nothing romantic about that. So, come winter, or come November, I may awaken to find this less a dream and more a nightmare. I am trying to prepare for the possibility, but I think I can’t. I also don’t want to. Like when someone is terminally ill, but their death still feels like a shock? The brain just can’t totally go there until…

The fact of Covid is also throwing some blinders on me. I actually can’t work right now. No actor can. It isn’t safe and won’t be for quite a while longer. Theatre, where I work most often, will likely be one of the last industries to return. So, even though I just left NYC, it isn’t like I left work opportunities. There is nothing there to miss out on. When that changes, my attitude might change too. There is a weird “school’s out for the summer” vibe right now. Albeit, a looooong summer that’s not the fun vacation kind, but more of the stuck at home inside your bedroom kind, like with a cast on or something and no WiFi. However, it is kind of a free pass. There is nowhere to report. No FOMO. Nada. Might as well move across the country because, who cares? If politics and dropping temperatures don’t burst my bubble, will the re-opening (God willing) of Broadway be my death knell? Could be.

But, OK. Enough of the gloom. Time to flip it. What if none of that happens? Or, even if all of that happens, what if this crazy choice was right regardless? When I look at my life, I see many lives, actually. Truth be told, I’ve made a habit of change. This is a great irony, since change often makes me anxious and angry. I cling to plans. There was enough upheaval in my early years that the second I was able to make my own choices about my life, I held onto the goals I set with a death grip—which is probably why it felt like death when things didn’t work out the way I’d hoped. Control is definitely an illusion, but damn I want it still. It takes a lot for me to switch gears. Maybe that’s why I only do it in pretty big ways? I have to hear over and over from various external and internal sources that something is not working before I can pivot and regroup. But once that happens, I go all in. After all, a new life is a chance to make a really BIG new plan. I have evidence that I can change my life (or life can change for me) completely, and I will survive, even thrive. That is the beauty, and sometimes the tragedy, of getting older. Not so long ago I left my first marriage, and with it, a carefully built career in Los Angeles. Most of “our” friends stayed his friends. Every single thing about that change still hurts, but it made space for the life I eventually found with David and our daughter and my work on Broadway—dreams all. Sometimes one dream has to die to allow a greater dream to unfold. It can hurt and still be right. Choosing to let go can be excruciating, especially for people who hold on too tight for too long out of fear and stubbornness. But is is the only way forward if the life you are living is not working.

Our life on the east coast was actually good. We didn’t leave because things couldn’t keep on working there. It’s just…there was this rumble. There was a dissonant hum underneath the effort of our life. It was bloody expensive there, for one. It was also just so full of people. The sweet hamlet in which we lived, loved for its quaintness and proximity to NYC, had become so overcrowded that I could never find a place to park in the middle of a Tuesday in the Village. We couldn’t even buy tickets to take our child to see the high school musical because it sold out within minutes. The sense of competition for jobs and parking and air was getting to me. There was opportunity there that does not exist here, but in order to get what you wanted, you had to fight for it. After a certain point, it finally occurred to me that I actually didn’t want to have to fight to be happy.

So, am I really happy here, or am I ‘acting as if’ I am because that’s what I am trained to do? In other words, am I actually delusional—ha! In so many ways it makes no sense that I would like this place. I am indoorsy. I am high maintenance. I like nice things. Yet, in other ways, it makes perfect sense. There is great beauty here. There is space. There is no one to compete with, except the voices in my head. This is kind of silly, but it is a small example of what I think I mean: I always press the air recirculation button on my car’s ventilation system, because I hate all the fumes from traffic coming in. I’m kind of obsessive about having that button pressed. Well, yesterday, as I was driving to pick up Finley from her Kindergarten, which is actually located inside a forest, I smelled something. Flowers? I inhaled more deeply. It had rained briefly and the damp dirt road and late summer blooms filled my senses. I looked down. The button had somehow been depressed. The outside was coming in, and it was not toxic, it was delicious. Sweetness flowing in and out, unguarded. It almost made me laugh. If I never have to press that button again, that would be something, wouldn’t it? There will be plenty of armor needed against new challenges in this place: winter gear, political resilience, creating more of our own work. Our couples’ therapist once said there is no such thing as soulmates or conflict-free relationships; you just have to decide which set of issues you can live with. When I consider the two realities and look at my degree of daily battle in each, I see the difference clearly. Maybe it isn’t so much that I am happier here, but that I can stop waging war to survive. Maybe it’s not just the presence of joy, but the absence of absurd effort that will make a difference in our life going forward. Maybe I don’t need to prove more, be first, be best, get in, go far. I did that. I can do it again, if needed. I think that not having all those old issues has given me enough room that these new issues aren’t as big a deal. I can roll with the old pipes and demolition because the other battlefields are gone. These seem tiny by comparison, and I am more than capable of handling them. That feels empowering, and it does make me happy. I don’t have to over-reward myself with luxury, just to counteract the noise and nurse the brutal disappointments. It takes less to be ok. The field is more even. I am more even. It's not a matter of playing a part or becoming someone else. It is finding another kind of character.

Mine.