Last night, a girl in my class, Lauren, was asked, “Why did you quit acting?”
She said, “Because I hated who I was becoming and what I was about.”
She said she was incredibly vain, perpetually concerned about her weight and size, always looking in a mirror, and beyond that, she was becoming incredibly cynical and bitter…about EVERYTHING. Not just about her art. Nothing was making her happy, there was never enough money, the parts sucked, etc. etc. etc.
So she quit acting, left NYC and came back to Denver.
She’s really one of the most bubbly people I’ve ever met. Very pleasant, incredibly talented, blah blah blah. She’s the girl everyone wants to be BFF with. Seriously.

But she just made me think…

I don’t want to become cynical and bitter.
I am surrounded on a pretty constant basis by people who are or seem to be. People who bitch incessantly about anything and everything…the color of paint, the time a conference call is scheduled, the weather, the snow, the traffic, the gas prices, food (or lack thereof)…I mean EVERYTHING.

And I just don’t want to become a person like that. It’s pretty sad, really, to hear it all the time.

I try (or at least, I think I try) to stay positive and do what I can. Sometimes I fail miserably. We all know that. But I try. I try to put forth a good effort NOT to bitch about every little thing. There are things that set me off, yes, but certainly not paint.

I just came across something that nearly set me off, but I’m trying to be very “oh well” about it. I called to confirm our hotel reservations for Boston and found out that I was given mis-information so our room is now going to cost about $200 more than I was planning on it. Awesome. I told Todd that just once, I would like to take a trip that doesn’t have hiccups. Our honeymoon was full of them. Plenty of them. Pretty much every trip we’ve taken since we’ve been married has had a pretty decent sized problem. Sometimes it makes me sad because I love traveling so much and it bugs me that crap happens all the time on our trips.

But whatever, right? At least we’re going, I suppose.

Traveling certainly doesn’t make me cynical. Just circumstances. A big one right now (sorry for the vagueness) is really setting me off and there are things I wish I could say and/or do, but I’m not brave enough and it just wouldn’t help the situation any at this point. I’m just hopeful that I can manage to suffer through and that it’ll all work out in the end. There are some things coming down the pipe that, while not big or life-altering (not really, anyway), will help to make life easier, more quickly.

And while I have a few days off of school, I’d like to make a concerted effort to cook more for Todd and give him a break from the house while I can…before we start the madness up again…