Friday Night Footlights

I'm going to improv and the VIC tonight. This will be only the 5th time in 4 months I've gone.1  There was a time, a few years ago, when I was at the theatre three times a week.2  What changed?

I'm not entirely sure. At the beginning, I felt a real need to immerse myself in it, so as to get through the awkward beginner stage as quickly as possible.3 And certainly I've been a lot busier with work recently, but I'm not sure that explains it.

I think a lot of it is that I've been feeling less like I need to do improv, just like I haven't been feeling the need to roleplay. Right now, I'm really enjoying work. It's challenging me and forcing me to grow in ways that I've always wanted work to push me. It's taking up a lot more of my brainspace than my previous job did, and, at the same time, it's providing me with a lot more of a creative outlet than the old job did. I've also been away from improv for long enough that I no longer have the immediate feeling of loss that comes from not doing it regularly. It dropped out of my routine due to necessity, and now it doesn't feel weird not to be doing it.

What I absolutely do miss is the people, and that's why I'm going back tonight. I could easily say that I'm too tired from traveling and that I need the whole weekend to recover,4 but the folks at the VIC are wonderful people who I want to spend time with. That's why I'm going down tonight and why I really want to find a way to make improv work for me again in the fall.5



1 Yes, I'm a little OCD about keeping track of things like that.

2 Plus roleplaying every week.

3 Now I'm at the awkward intermediate stage, which always lasts forever no matter how much time I seem to spend at it.

4 As it is, I'm only blowing off most of the weekend. Every Labor Day Weekend is our annual 3-day festival, but I'm only going down for tonight.

5 This goes double for roleplaying.