22 + 23

I’m going to slightly gloss over yesterday because the primary highlight was going to a South Indian festival (Onam) that a friend of mine invited me to – and indulging in some excellent food while there – and instead skip to this evening because I did something I never actually thought I’d do.

I went to a Meetup event. 

To backtrack a bit, while I was in Greece, there was a point where I started getting into an anxious semi-panic about feeling lonely and isolated (which, given that I do have a pretty solid network here, was probably a bit dramatic), so inspired in part by that, as well as by an itch to try and break into the theatre community here a bit, I started feverishly browsing Meetup. Before I knew it, I had signed up for an acting class. Their first meetup was at a pub this evening – a sort of introductory, say hello type thing. And honestly, up until I walked through the door and headed to the table where the rest of the group was seated, I was fighting an urge to turn around and head home because the thought of these kinds of events and how awkward they can be – I really, really hate small talk – usually puts me off. Thankfully, this one wasn’t awkward (also, I had already paid the registration fee for the class I signed up for so I figured I was more or less tied into this thing). Except for an exercise in which we split into small groups to analyze story structure/character motivation in a film (a sort of introduction to text analysis for actors, if you will), the majority of the evening consisted of everyone sitting around a table listening to the man who’s going to be running the workshops talk. 

Also, as a wonderful surprise, I ended up running into an old acquaintance there (though it took us a minute to recognize one another). Funny how small the theatre community can feel sometimes. 

And yeah, there’s a question in the back of my head of whether or not I would have been motivated to sign up for this were I still in a relationship, but I’d like to think it wouldn’t have made a difference (hell, I took pottery on my own when I was still in Boston/with the ex). Anyway, I could always just be cliché and say this is part of my whole ‘renewal’/’reinventing’ process, even though I’m essentially just doing an activity I’ve always loved doing and always sought out.