What’s Going On

The last few months have been difficult. Every time I go to write something, it’s just a reminder of the fact that nothing in my life has changed. I’m still hopelessly single, completely unemployable, living with my family, overweight, and have no friends. The only thing that’s changed in my life is that I have started taking up old lady hobbies to fill my time and try to add some meaning to my life. The answer to life’s problems is not in needlepoint, counted cross-stitch, or knitting. I’m just stuck in this ditch on the side of the road alone. I apply for jobs and don’t even get a response now. I try working out to lose weight so even if I never have anyone in my life, or a job, and get taken to prison for failure to pay $30,000 in student loans for a degree that isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on, I won’t be the fattest, whitest girl in prison and the next day I’m too sore to even walk up a flight of stairs. It just seems like I am completely failing at every aspect of this life thing. I don’t even have any friends. All of my former class mates are texting our group chat with exciting updates and pictures from their jobs and all I have to show for my life is how much my highlights have grown out and faded because I don’t have the money to get my hair done or even cut. I can’t even leave the group chat because they will just add me back – I’ve tried in the past and it hasn’t worked. Seeing them talk about the various aspects of their jobs just reminds me of the fact that I don’t have anything to talk about. I keep listening to “The Goodbye Song” from the canceled NBC drama Smash on repeat over and over again because it sounds like how my soul feels. They are working and living on their own and living up to the expectations everyone has set for them. All I ever do is fall short. A few weeks ago, I went with my family to a viewing area that was directly on the eclipse path and watched the eclipse with one of my mom’s sisters. That was the highlight of my August. The eclipse was an incredible thing to witness. It was a natural phenomenon that seemed to unite the country in a weird way. Despite all the problems facing the country on that day, they all fell aside for that brief minute. That was an incredible thing to witness and I understand why my mother and people in her generation so distinctly and fondly remember the eclipse in the ‘70’s. As incredible as it was, it was the only thing I did in August. I didn’t do anything else of remote significance for the entire month. Not for lack of trying – I applied for a large number for jobs but somehow these employers are able to see the truth about me just from my resume – that I am a complete and total loser who will only disappoint them. There are some truths in this life that are undeniable – the sun will rise every morning and set every evening, dog people and cat people will never agree, and I, Sarah Dodson, am a complete and total loser and will disappoint every person who believes in me for even a moment. I don’t mean to be such a loser – somehow it just happened. I had such lofty dreams and too much ambition for a single person to have so I never realized that I was a loser until it was too late to fix. Now I’m just stuck here. I will end up dying old and alone, unloved, not having achieved anything in my life. That’s the opposite of what I wanted. When I was little, I didn’t dream of being an actor or rockstar the way most children do. I just wanted to not end up alone. I naively thought that would be easy. I thought that I would meet a nice guy and have friends and it would work out because I was a nice person. I cared about other people and thought I was at the very least mildly amusing. I never really knew what I wanted to do but I thought I’d at least have minimal success because I was fairly smart – not a genius by any means but I picked up on things pretty quickly and had a decent memory. Stupidly, I set myself up to become the biggest loser of them all. John Lennon wrote “Life is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans” and it’s true. Life just ran me over and beat me down while I was thinking I had it figured out. Even through what could only be thought of as the worst of times – when my parents were going through a terribly messy divorce – I still thought that life would have to balance out eventually. My father was emotionally abusive for years and then replaced me when he started his new family with his secretary/mistress of 10+ years. And when I told him I didn’t want him in my life, he didn’t understand why and continued to use me and my siblings as chess pieces for years to try and hurt my mother. It didn’t hurt her – it hurt me. In all that mess and heartache I still thought that my life would eventually work out. With a little time, I would be able to get everything I ever wanted. Cosmically it would even out because of karma and all that stuff. I had my garbage, life changing moment so it would all work out now. I thought I was on that path, but now it turns out I wasn’t. Because now I’m lost in the middle of nowhere. They don’t make road maps or even have mile markers for life. When you get lost, all you have are your instincts and intuition to guide yourself. If I haven’t made it clear already, I seem to be lacking in those departments.

The five steps of grief are Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance. I don’t really know what stage I’m in but what prompted this long rambling was some kind of shift in this scale for grieving the loss of my hopes and dreams. At the end of August, my 16-year old sister had her second micro discectomy and was diagnosed with early onset degenerative disc disease, which in it of itself is state altering enough. But the thing that really got me was that her boyfriend, who is also just 16, has given up an incredible amount of time to sit at her bedside both in the hospital and at our house with me and our mother watching their almost every move all because he cares an incredible amount for her. I don’t think I’ve ever had someone in my life who has cared about me that much, outside of my family of course. That’s what did me in. Realizing that I’ve never been that close to anyone in 22 years and she’s done it in just 16 has just cemented the fact that it probably won’t ever happen for me. My mother tells me that I’ll meet someone – I just need to move to an area with more like-minded people. It makes sense in theory. But at my age, my mother had been engaged for a year and was only a few months away from marrying my father. And before she met my father, she had already had at least three serious relationships. The closest thing I have to a relationship is my growing infatuation with Tim Daly (which is absolutely worthy of it’s own essay and probably indicative of my mental issues and need for therapy). It’s not for lack of trying. Just like my job search, my efforts to meet someone are fruitless. I even joined a few dating apps and it’s just pathetic. The few people I match with don’t even contact me after we match. I even message them first and still nada. It just cements the fact that I will just end up alone, which just makes me sad. The one thing I’ve never wanted is to be alone. Yet somehow everything in my life has led me to be alone or just reminds me of the fact that I am. This all then culminates in crying breakdowns that last for hours while I’m hiding from my family in the middle of the night; and then I wake up with a terrible headache and a massive amount of eye boogies in the morning. I don’t know what will change the fact that I’m a lonely loser. At this point it seems that all I know is that it needs to change because eye boogies are just gross.

When one door closes, another one opens. You’ll find something better. When a door closes, a window opens. Every ending is a new beginning. You’re better off without it. It’ll all work out in the end. Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end. These clichés, rationalizations, and Semisonic lyrics are meant to be comforting in times of hardship or rejection. But why is it that they are considered comforting? They aren’t really all that comforting when you are on the receiving end of them. Here was this opportunity that you were excited about- it may not have been perfect, but you were excited nonetheless. You thought you knew what the next step was, but now that step isn’t there. The opportunity didn’t pan out, and people who don’t really understand what you’re going through give out these clichés like free candy. Yes these sayings are something to say when you don’t know what to say. I’ve said them all before and had many people say them to me. Just because that’s the standard thing to say to someone, doesn’t mean it’s what the other person wants to hear or needs to hear. It’s become the equivalent of asking someone how they are when you don’t care how they are doing and them replying with “Fine. How are you?” when they aren’t fine and don’t really want to know how you are. When did we all become these creatures who merely say what we think the other person wants to hear? As kids we never thought like that. We just said what was on our minds until we were taught to be polite and respectful. At least I was. It wasn’t my place to put my hardships or struggles onto someone who is just being polite. But when did we just start assuming that people are only being polite when they ask? What if they really do care how I’m doing today? How will I ever know if I don’t open up to people? If the things we say to others are never anything more than social conventions, then when and how do we ever make genuine connections to those around us? If we don’t feel a connection to the world around us, and subsequently the people in our lives, how do we know when there is a true ending and something new begins? I moved out of my house at school this weekend. In the last few weeks, I finished my final college courses, moved home, got my diploma, and officially moved all of my stuff out of my house at school and into storage. All that should signify the ending of my college career. And since every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end (yes I listen to too much late ‘90’s pop), I should be in a new beginning. My last beginning ended so now I’m in a new one. But this one is feels the same. My life should be different, or at least feel different, but it’s all the same. I still don’t have a prospect on a job and it seems like everyone I know is working towards something while I’m just treading water. I thought officially leaving Winston-Salem would signify the end of that chapter of my life and allow for the next to start. But that doesn’t just happen. I don’t feel any different between before school finished, I moved home, and I moved out of my house. You have to make the change happen. That’s life lesson #2: if you want something to change, you have to change it. Simple enough, right? When you don’t have the ability to change the thing that needs changing, you have to learn to be ok with it and then do everything in your power to change it. I’m trying to change my situation and just waiting for the universe to catch up. So what now?

I spent my entire high school career working towards getting into college, specifically a theatre conservatory, and focusing on my family, which was in distress. I didn’t date. I didn’t really hang out with friends. The only extra circular activity I did was theatre. I never really had a life and never thought twice about it because ultimately, it paid off. I had a G.P.A. of 3.5 from one of the most prestigious prep schools in Tennessee. I applied to four of the most prestigious theatre conservatories (as well as a slew of other colleges) and was accepted to three conservatories and the other colleges I applied to. I thought, “This is IT! I am going to The University of North Carolina School of the Arts! I will major in Stage Management! I will move to NYC and be a Stage Manager on Broadway!” I was convinced that was exactly how my life would turn out. Life lesson #1 of this blog: Just because you plan for your life to go a certain way, that doesn’t mean the universe (or whatever higher power you believe in) will allow it to be so. The first two years of college, I was working toward the goal of being a high-powered Stage Manager on Broadway and thought I was in paradise. I thought I’d maybe be an opera Stage Manager instead but I was going to be working on big productions. About half way through my junior year, I started to have a crisis of identity. First off – a little background on my college experience. UNCSA is a stand-alone conservatory and the entire campus’s curriculum is based around the physical productions on campus and the hours need to make those shows happen. This means that for my main course “Production”, which is a six-credit lab class that is time solely devoted to working on the physical productions that were happening on campus. All productions on the UNCSA campus, whether it’s a play, an opera, a dance concert, or a film shoot, are entirely student run. This class is a minimum of four hours every day but for stage managers it is usually six hours a day. The reason for this small tangent is that if you are going to understand where I am coming from, you need to have a basic understanding of how UNCSA works. Now back to my crisis. The way it worked out, I didn’t have a production assignment for five months. I managed to find some local, off campus jobs and some small opportunities on campus but those gigs were not guaranteed and I had to find them. Had I not found them, I would have been sitting at home watching Netflix for a six-credit class. This is was the catalyst for my identity crisis, which has yet to finish. Because I was given time off by my professors and because of my background (which will be discussed at length – just you wait), I naturally thought it was because they didn’t want me working on anything because I wasn’t good enough. This was furthered by the fact that every time I asked my professors why I had time off, their response was either “That’s just how it worked out”, “It’ll work out, trust me”, or “You just need to get over it and move on”. Now having the time and the motivation to really analyze myself, my love for stage management and theatre, and what my skills actually are, I started to question whether I should be a stage manager and if I wanted to. To add fodder to my crisis, I was in the middle of a friend break-up with my best friend who was also my roommate. We had been super close since the first week of college and he didn’t want to be friends with me anymore. To be fair, I had become a pretty miserable person because of the feeling terrible about myself and thinking I had no value as a stage manager. That’s the thing about making one part of your person the majority of your identity – it will come back to nip you in the bud. I was a really good stage manager and I had invested so much of my life into becoming one that when it started to crumble away I just broke down. When I started to retreat into myself and get lost in a dark place, my friend didn’t know how to deal with it or with me. I don’t blame him for bowing out. He did what he needed to do to take care of himself. I respect him for knowing when something was out of his wheelhouse and knowing when to walk away. Removing himself from my life was the best thing he could have done for himself – he finished his college experience strong and with the experience he wanted. The third leg of the trifecta was that on April 28, 2016 my grandmother died. Fortunately, I was able to be with her when she passed but her death hit me harder than I thought it would. She was ninety-one years old and lived a very full life. It was her time to go and my whole family was ready to let go. But nevertheless, it was one of the hardest moments of my life. Because my junior year was so hard emotionally, I decided to take the summer off and not do an internship. It’s the expectation at UNCSA that students do a summer internship in their area of study. That summer was one of the greatest summers of my life. I got to relax and hang out at the pool every day and for the first time in a long time I was completely stress free. When I was able to get some distance from everyone at school, teachers and students alike, I realized that I still love theatre. And so, I thought that meant I still loved stage management. I went into my senior year of ready and excited to be a stage manager and hopeful for the new and final year. The year started off well enough. I was working on a production of The Last Days of Judas Iscariot directed by one of my favorite directors and the design and production team was comprised of wonderful people. That production was one of the best experiences I had in school and if every project I do could be as amazing an experience, being a stage manager would be a great career to have. But not every production is like that, unfortunately. My next project was the one that broke the camel’s back. I was stage managing the biggest production of the year – an opera entitled Florencia en el Amazonas. I was so excited to be given such a huge opportunity. I had never worked on a show that big before but thought surely I can handle it. The director and design and production team had already been working on the project for seven months by the time I was assigned, so already I was behind. Not so unusual for stage managers to be brought onto a production after the rest of the team so I figured that wouldn’t be a huge issue. Turns out it was a bigger issue than I anticipated. There was so much information to be learned and so little time to learn it that I just started drowning in it all. Because I’m a pro (not really but let’s pretend), I was able to keep it all together enough so the production kept chugging along. But I was miserable. Everyone on the team was constantly frustrated with me because I couldn’t live up to their standards. They expected me to be perfect and mediocre was a stretch for me. In that, I realized that if doing the job were enough, I would have been happy. I was doing the best anyone in my circumstance could do and if the joy of the job were enough, I would have been ok with people being mad at me for not being perfect. I would have still been happy. But I was miserable. That made me realize the job wasn’t enough for me anymore. I was working almost 24 hours a day and a continual punching bag for every person who had an issue. I wasn’t mad at anyone for treating me that way – that’s a part of the job of a stage manager. But what it all taught me is that the job wasn’t enough for me. I needed more in my life than the job, which was never something I knew I needed. The job had always been enough. Even if I had needed a break away from the work occasionally, ultimately it was enough for me. This realization happened in February 2017. With graduation in May, I started trying to figure out what I was going to do. I learned that I wanted a career that would allow me to have a life outside of work. So what kind of career in the arts allows for a life? Something with a 9-5 schedule, which mostly means office and administration work would allow for a life outside of work? Sounds perfect, right? These jobs use the skills that I love from being a stage manager but don’t require me to be in a rehearsal studio or theatre and work 24/7. Now don’t get me wrong – there are stage managers that are able to find a balance and have a full life. And it’s not a contractual obligation of the job that you are available 24/7 but being available when anyone needs you or has a question is an expectation. And knowing myself I would never be able to find that balance and I would work all the time because that’s how I was for my entire time at school. And when I loved every aspect of the job, I didn’t need a life outside of it. But when I stopped loving the job or didn’t have the work to fall back on, I was empty and lost. So I decided to pursue a career in administration for the arts. The only problem is I don’t have a degree in administration and I have no experience in administration work. I have the skills to do almost any of these jobs – maybe I’m lacking in a few specific computer programs but I’m millennial I can teach myself any computer program. I have a degree from a very well respected and connected institution, my professors think highly of me, I think highly of myself (not in an egotistical or narcissistic way, just in a confidence way), and I am an ambitious, talented self-starter. Surely I can get an entry-level job for some theatre company or a job as an administrative assistant – The Devil Wears Prada style. Turns out that entry-level jobs require experience – the one thing chutzpah can’t get you. So here I am: 22-years old, unemployed, no skills to get a job I’m interested in, uninterested in jobs that my degree qualifies me for, living at home, hopelessly single, and totally lost both emotionally and sometimes very literally because I’m terrible at navigating. I am in the midst of a quarter life crisis. Where to now?