I've been doing some Bruce Lee ruminating lately and it has led me to a sort of "at peace" feeling with how my life in the coming year may shake out.  I put "at peace" in quotes because "peace" for me still involves a lot of activity, stress and cartons and cartons of cigarettes.  Yeah, remember when I quit smoking?  Hmmm, neither do I.  Here's my conclusion:

So what if I don't get the internships I auditioned for?  So the hell what?  I have innumerable opportunities waiting for me if I don't.  See, when I get into trouble is when I think I have no options, when I pile all of my eggs in one basket, despite the fact that there are numerous other, just as attractive, baskets lying around, waiting for me to put an egg in.

About ten years ago, just after rejections from two grad programs, I was leaving a meeting for another grad program that I really had no interest in attending.  I walked through a slushy snow in Boston Common, where I happened upon a statue of an angel, arms outspread in either a sowing or gathering gesture.  The base of the statue, which was also a fountain, said "Cast your bread upon the waters."  It's a fragment of a Bible verse that ends with "...for you shall find it again after many days."  It's a verse that is all about karma.  What you cast upon the waters of the universe will come back to you in kind, over time.  I stood in front of the statue, wearing a black beret and wool coat: a crow against the gathering snow drifts.  "You know, I wouldn't need grad school if I had some kind of community to feel a part of," I said to the statue, more of a rebuke than a request.  A short two months later, I auditioned for and was accepted into the first cast of the Improv Asylum.  I found my community.  I found my second family.  I found my home.

So I guess I'm feeling a little bit of the same anxiety that I felt standing in front of the statue of the Angel of the Waters (that's her name...I think I'll call her "Brenda," though).  I learned how to find community, so that's not the issue.  What I'm looking for now is a sense of fulfillment.  A knowledge that I have started to negotiate the terrain of my true path.  I always knew that I was supposed to be involved in theater, but now I'm realizing that the specificities of this calling have eluded me.  I've spent the last year and a half in grad school (and several of the years before that) trying out various niches in the theatrical world.  Voice overs, improv, straight acting, Shakespeare, on-camera, theater of the oppressed, radio dramas, writing, teaching, creative training, directing...  I feel like a Goldilocks in the house of the bears where none of the chairs are too hard or soft, but they're only ALMOST just right.  Never quite the perfect fit.

I'm still looking for my path, but I'm confident it's there.  And if I have to face a little rejection in the course of finding it, so be it.  As the immortal Bruce Lee said: "To hell with circumstances; I create opportunities."