A Bad Review

What a most unusual day. It was my turn to do my monolog for class. The Professor worked with me for a while and gave up, more or less. She asked if I’d been in the military because I was so like a ramrod; I said no. She had me to relax my body and breathe more deeply, to use my breath to deliver thoughts and changes of thought. Well, it didn’t work very well because I was busy complying with what I thought she wanted me to do and not getting to it. So now I have a few minutes to process what was going on and see if I can make any sense out of it.

She said I seemed to be concentrating on getting my lines right, to say them verbatim. We both know how important this is but she is telling me that while it is important to get the words correct it is equally important to put the emotional content (feeling) in the delivery as well; to allow the intended emotion to flow through along with the words; to deliver the lines as if I don’t know what comes next as if the character is thinking of what he is going to say next as he is saying the current phrase; to strive for spontaneity of expression as the lines are said; to not fall into patterns of voice that are rote.

Then there was the psychological observation she made that hit home with me. She said I am so focused on one thing that I am not allowing other things to happen; so focused on doing a good job of saying my lines that I am preventing any spontaneous emotional expression to take place. I am using a discipline that is focused on one thing when success depends on the focus being wider, i.e. like a camera with depth of field where the foreground and the background are in focus at the same time. This is true—I tend to focus on one result when there are multiple results that need to be achieved for success.

My history of this sort of thing has been a continuum of fighting crises and avoiding failure; usually because I was in over my head; I-o-w, didn’t have a strategy for handling problems that may come up. This held true for my first attempt at college, then once married and back in school, oops we had a baby and a second on the way. Once again I was in the mode of fighting crisis when I needed 23 semester hours in my second last semester. A two hour course, Dynamics, was below par and I vowed to the instructor that I would bring it up to at least a C in the second half of the semester or delay graduating by six months. It worked out.

Then C arola had to have surgery … then we bought a small house… then we had to move to a larger house… then the Cleveland job seemed to be in jeopardy… then the kids went to college… then Tenneco Inc in Houston…, then France…, and on and on. And they all worked out. Surmounting difficulties, or coming up with strategies after problems occurred rather than before, was 75% of my effort and taking advantage of opportunities got whatever was left. I was still operating in this mode until recently but since 2008, with the aid of having articulated my dreams and a good plotting and scheming method, I find that I am more taking advantage of opportunities than overcoming crises. But I find that my propensity is to work from a solving the crisis mind set or waiting until a big problem occurs before taking action, even when I am in opportunity mode.

Then there’s the responsibility bind. Along with solving these various crises has come the feeling that I must be seen by others as successful. So I tend to get a little overwhelmed with a myriad of details, many left undone or unsatisfactorily handled.

Then there is the performance factor, feeling that I must be impressive. Usually this works against me and the opposite happens, I fail in performing as I did today: perhaps too distracted by the doing. I have a rather strong need/ desire to not be criticized, not necessarily approved but respected.

Then, and perhaps finally, there is the need for acceptance and inclusion. The class that is the subject of this writing is a good case in point. I go into the classroom and am excluded from the conversation almost entirely. The others in the class are at least forty-five years younger than I, not an excuse but a fact. When I talk to them individually they are polite and respond but for all intents and purposes I don’t exist in their presence and various assays have met with cold shoulders or a nod and a smile then put on ignore. I have a tendency to hang back in any new situation to avoid being rejected and then slowly insert myself into the fray. In the past it has taken a few weeks to get through this awkward interval but this time it continues and I feel like a definite outsider. But then I find that this is generally true. This needs some work on my part but what to do?

All of this tumbles out of the brief time I spent in front of the class with the professor. I’d have to chalk it up to failure to perform because I was unable to do what she wanted. She also said, “The next time perhaps you can chose a monolog with more depth.” So what I did, even though it met with her prior approval, was not good. She said I was rigid, overly controlled, unemotional, not connected with my character, not any good as an actor. She didn’t actually say these things but this is what I heard. So what’s next? I’ll stay the course and all I can say is, “Don’t boo me, I didn’t write this stuff.”