Shades of Way…

It’s one of those “good news/bad news” things.

Actually, it’s a lot of those “good new/bad news” things.

Here are a few…

So, we had the staged reading on Saturday for my play, Murielle’s Big Date. It was very well. The audience was roaring with laughter, which is kind of what you want in a comedy. All the folks from the theater kept telling me what a terrific play it was. That said, there were only about 15-20 people in the audience, in a theater that sat about 200. That was pretty disappointing. Of the “friends and family” I invited, only about ten showed.

I know of several people who read this blog who are bound to take a great deal of pleasure in the misfortune tied to this event. I will chose to observe the fortunate aspects.

Friday, I found out my old job was open again, the one I got laid off from. Today, I learned it wasn’t my old job after all. My position had already been filled. It was filled shortly after I was laid off. It was filled by a floozy who could barely spell but whom my ex-boss really wanted to fuck, which is how everyone assumed she got the job. This is how I was replaced. This is how replaceable I am. This is what I’m worth, it would appear.

I know of several people who read this blog who will find this pretty damned funny and who will probably send me messages telling me how this proves their theories about my worth. And I agonized over whether I should mention this or not on this public forum but I decided to because I know I’m not above life’s absurdities. I’m not infallible. I’m just as prone to the cruelties of life as anyone else and if knowing how shitty this is for me makes it any easier for someone else to deal with the crap life throws their way then it’s worth it for me to mention it.

Lastly, there’s the issue of how this blog has become a magnet for people who hate me. Because I’ve never been the kind of person to think anyone would hate me. In truth, I just thought I was worth ignoring – so whenever I said anything I thought could be considered controversial I just thought, “Well, they’ll walk away and ignore me.” But the opposite has occurred and struck by the many blows life keeps throwing me way, finding myself able at most to just keep trying and hoping that things get a little better, I wonder to myself more and more what the point is of writing on this blog if the most I can hope for is to make more people hate me. I think of these people - they aren't many but they are loud - and I think I should stop writing in this blog. And when I think of why they might hate me, things get more absurd. Because I don’t do hateful things, things worthy of hatred.

But that doesn’t matter. Life isn’t fair. It’s hard and it’s cold and sometimes people are, too. They don’t care who you are. If you get in the way of someone looking to hate, it’s like standing in a urine stream; you’ll get wet.

So, what’s the good news to the bad news? Why is this called “shades of way”? Because they good news is there’s always another way. I’m going to sidestep the hate as I always do – because I’m very sure I’ll receive comments or emails in response expressing extreme dislike though I won’t really deserve it. I suppose, if I had to guess, one might say that my lack of friends shows I’m not worthy of friendship or that the ease with which I’m replaced shows my lack of professional worth or perhaps that I’m misogynistic in claiming that the woman who replaced me was a floozy – and I’m going to remind myself about how I don’t have to respond to hate or to my job situation or to the small turnout as any indictment against me. Sometimes, shit just happens. And that’s the good news.

Shit just happens. I’ll keep on working on plays, on books, on whatever fulfills me as an artist. You don’t create art just for the audience, after all. And my worth as an employee isn’t determined by what my ex-boss chooses to do in replacing me, and though it might make me feel pretty shitty, it doesn’t mean I don’t have value. And people are going hate you sometimes. You can try to be the nicest person you can be, the best person you can be. It doesn’t matter. Someone once said I was just like one of the people who hates me – but that doesn’t mean it’s true. All it means is they don’t know.

Shit just happens.

And that’s the good news.