Lair of the Lost Girl

There are so many things I want to do, and I don't even know where to start.

I need to learn how to sew, more than just a simple T-tunic or skirt and bodice. I need to learn how to follow a modern pattern, and how to make decent Elizabethan garb. Everyone else around here already can, and I look like a pauper at SCA events.

I went to the fabric and crafts store yesterday, and looked at their list of events and organizations. They have dozens of meetings and clubs for knitters and quilters. Of course, there's nothing for crocheters. This means I need to learn how to knit.

I desperately need to learn how to sing. It's something nearly all of my friends do, and it makes me feel sick not to be able to join them. This is probably technically the easiest, but I don't know if it'll be possible - whether or not I'm able to learn, I'm so psychically married to the image of myself as a non-singer, I don't know if I'll be able to get past that block.

After watching the performances at Arisia, I desperately want to get involved in vintage dance again. And middle eastern dance too, even though I know I don't have the body shape for it. And my sweetie wants to take swing lessons, and far be it from me to ever turn down a dance style.

Of course, it's not like I don't have hobbies already. I have my crocheting, and my needlepoint and cross-stitch, and what little sewing I already do. And theatre, and renaissance dance, and cooking, and baking. There just isn't enough space in one lifetime to fit in all the things I want to do.

Part of this, I think, comes from desperately searching for something to be mine. I'm not *good* at any one thing. I've tried, and tried, but I'm just incapable of excelling at anything. No matter what I try, when I tell people about it, it's always met with yawns and the fact that they know someone better than me. Their sister is an award-winning performance dancer. Their girlfriend already stitched that piece, better than I ever could. I have friends who are award-winning musicians; people come from miles around to hear them perform. My damn uncle has a Grammy. I've never won an award. Noone has ever come from miles away to watch me or see me or praise my deeds.

I need to find something I can be good at, something that can be *mine.* My thing, that I do. I don't need or expect to be better than everyone, I just want to be good enough for someone to notice. So I search, and I try, and I wind up with more hobbies than I have the time or money to support. I enjoy them all, of course... I just wish I could find one that was Just Right for me.

If you're going to have butterflies in your stomach, you might as well enjoy it. :)

Tonight was my first audition in more years than I care to think about. It wasn't for anything big - just a little dance/song/play thing that's going to be put on at an SCA event in a few months, but even the little things around here are big, if that makes any sense. And it's been *so* long that I forgot how nauseatingly addictive that precise blend of fear and anticipation and excitement and fun can be.

I'm fine about the dancing - as a matter of fact, that's why I went. The play is based around a couple of Greek myths, and there are a handful of 'chorus' parts that are dance-only. I figured I could more or less be certain of getting one of those, and there's a slightly more central part that's just talking and dancing a more complicated sword dance that I thought I might have a shot at - I'm one of the only people even vaguely familiar with the dance that's also willing to act.

But there's that little singing thing. I love to sing, which is why it scares me half to death. I've spent the past twenty years being told that I can't sing, that I shouldn't sing, that I'm a terrible singer, and it's only within the past year that I've gotten any input to the contrary. So it took all my chutzpah to stay in the room when they called everyone up one at a time to sing, and to walk up there and do it and not throw up or cry or run away and never come back. But I did it, and I didn't cry and I didn't die and I don't think I was even the worst one there.

And I think I have a part. The director asked me to stay after everyone else left, and read for one particular role again... not the role I was expecting, and not a singing role, but a bigger part than I ever expected to get. I don't want to leap to conclusions, but it would be marvelous if it happens.....