This is what I do

I am a good dramaturg, and I must remind myself of this.  People respect my opinions; I possess sound judgement; I am capable of expressing myself clearly; but, I need to remind myself of this.  I need to remind myself of my strengths and engage them.  I need to be confident and do what I do well.

Today I felt that need for confidence, though it took a shaming to make me feel anything.  This afternoon, leaving the literary office of the prestigious regional theater in Chicago, I felt like an unprepared idiot.  I shocked myself.  Last week, leaving the same literary office, I felt energized to be a part of a theater again.  Why the difference?  Dissipation.  That energy I felt last Thursday dissipated as I sat down to do my work.  "What am I doing, exactly?  Research only?  Should I have opinions?  I always have opinions -- should I write them down?"  My energy - as well as my intellect and ego - evaporated.  All the candor and humor I had last week were gone, leaving me in today's meeting with limp thoughts and unremarkable insights.  I humiliated myself, and this shouldn't happen.

I am a damn good dramaturg.  I work well with people, primarily because I know the value of both sympathy and tough love.  You can take or leave my opinions; but, you will receive them (and they're good opinions: I have a masters in this shite).  Today nobody received anything from me, except embarrassingly basic facts, and this was bad.  Very bad.

In today's meeting at the prestigious regional theater, I fumbled through papers and tried to bypass giving my opinion by instead spouting anecdotal notions and dumb questions.  Why?  Because I filtered myself.  From the get-go I didn't let myself do my job; instead I limited myself to being a go-fer.  This naive mistake will not happen again.  Especially since, after today's meeting (as I tried to correct my missteps), it felt good to sit down and plot-bead diagram and annotate my script.  It felt go to do the damn job I'm trained to do -- and that I like doing.   

Part of my problem comes from being rusty: it's been almost six months since I've really dramaturged anything.  So today, as I began the post-mortem of my embarrassing materials, determined to fix my mistakes, that little light bulb flicked on above my head.  "Oh!  DUH, JOSEPH!!" echoed in my head as I rediscovered my working methods.  I'm slowly emerging from the fog of post-thesis, post-school, job-hunting craziness.  And it's a whole bunch of crazy.

After two years of study, "What am I?  What am I doing?" reverberate in my mind.  Added to this refrain: "You come off too strong" was something I was told a lot in grad school. How do I combat this? Right now I come off as a flunky, bumbling and unprepared because I'm scared I'll be "too big for my britches" (as Sr. Geralyn would say to me).  Since I don't have any official position, these questions intimidate me as six scripts lay before me, taunting me.  I need to show them who's boss.

I need to get my head back in the game, get my sense of self back together, get ME up and running again. 

This challenge of pulling my head out of my ass will not be easily overcome.  I must let go of my neurosis about my surroundings;  I must let go of the fact that for the first time, in about 8 years, I am totally dependant upon others.  I must be confident in myself and my opinions.  And, I must present these valuable commodities in a diplomatic way (which I can do, contrary to what some of my professors may claim -- I just had the mistaken idea that grad school was a safe, judgement-free environment where I could be "off-the-cuff" in class.  Ha!).  Still: there is a light at the end of this tunnel; but, the journey to it will be winding.