There really isn't much of a similarity between baseball and theater, except that I love them both. Well, I love them both when things go my way. I love baseball when the Yankees are winning and it's exciting. And I love theater when I feel like I'm making progress. However, when the Yankees go on a losing streak and and I hit an obstacle in a scene or a song, suddenly I hate them. I turn off the Yankee games and sulk over why I can't manage to pull through whatever artistic challenges I am facing. Then the Yankees start to win and I come through artistically and life is good. Until the next time. It's a crazy cycle of love and hate.
One similarity baseball and theater have is that the participant must take risks and put himself out there in order to achieve maximum success. A few days ago, the Yankees had a miraculous win through a horrible play that the Mets made. It seemed clear that the Mets would win because this was a simple pop-up to the 2nd baseman. It was dropped and the score was tied. However, the only reason the Yankees won was because Mark Teixeira was running hard all the way from first base and managed to score. Had he just assumed that the Mets would catch that ball and jogged carelessly, the game would have been tied, but they wouldn't have won then. It was because he ran hard just in case because you never know what rare time someone else is going to drop the ball and things are going to go in your favor.
The only way to win is to run hard, but it sucks because 99% of the time that you run hard, the Mets will catch the ball and you'll look like the idiot who ran hard. If you never run hard, you'll never win, but you'll also never have to face the humiliation of putting yourself out there either.
It's the exact same way for artists trying to get themselves and their work out there. It is such an amazing feeling to take a risk and be vulnerable, but the feeling is just as awful when your work is not validated, be it in a scene, a song, or god forbid, an audition.
If only we knew which times the Mets or another team would drop the ball so that we didn't have to face that horrible feeling of having our raw selves out there and then being turned down. I don't mind putting myself out there when I know I'm going to succeed. That's the easy part. Taking risks in class are easier because school is so much safer. My teachers and classmates might not love my work, but usually it is safe, but even then it doesn't always feel safe. Obviously Mark Teixeira will run hard with no problem if it's obvious he is going to score. But how does he find the courage and strength, emotional and physical, to run when the odds are very against him?
It always hurts more to fail at something you invested in. It hurt more in high school when I did poorly on a test that I studied really hard for than when I did poorly on a test I didn't care about. And as important as it was to me to do well in school, it hurts a million times more when I feel like I failed in something artistic because it is my favorite thing in the world. After I put myself out there and things don't go as planned, I feel so horrible and exposed. I feel worthless and confused with my self-identity. Re-discovering myself is so hard. Putting myself out there seems to get a little easier each time, but handling it after seems to get a little harder each time. I don't know how much longer my wall can hold up. It keeps getting bumped into. It's bound to break soon unless it gets a nice boost.
I'm having a really hard time finding the strength to allow my raw self to consistently come through, even though chances are nothing will work out as planned. As I grow closer and closer to graduation and the real world, I worry about my endurance to show my true self. I do not audition very much right now as I am a full-time student, but the little auditioning I do does suck out my soul, and the rejection sucks out my soul even more. There are more auditions to come, which also means more opportunities for success, but also more opportunities for embarrassment and self-destruction.
But every now and then, we get lucky. It's not often, but I guess I just have to remember that the one time the other team drops the ball will make all the times they caught the ball and embarrassed me seem unimportant. The other team will drop the ball. Every now and then the Yankees get lucky. Other times bad calls are made against them. But the bottom line is, for every rejection and bad call you get, you're one time closer to luck and a dropped ball. You can only go so long before the other team makes an error, right?
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