To Wait

by Shaun

I’ve discovered... while I enjoy change, I don’t like waiting. Some people don’t like change, but I’ve always found it exciting and fun, like the improv game where you’re in a scene and then someone yells “freeze” and tells you that you’re now in a new scene, and “go.”  It’s electrifying! One minute “you’re Lebron James shooting a jumpshot,” and then you freeze mid-shot and become “a blade of grass trying out for American Grass Idol” (or something like that).

I like the change in that game, but I wouldn’t want to stand there frozen for very long. I’d get tired and impatient and I’d just want to be moving, either following through on the jumpshot or belting out Hendrix’s “The Wind Cries Mary” in front of the grass judges. And the thrilling, deep satisfaction in acting is that you really dive in and unleash all you’ve got into that one character or that one moment. I think it just feels good to give everything, no matter what you’re actually doing.

Some people don’t like change, but I don’t know anyone who likes to wait. 

Yet, that’s what I’m doing right now. I just turned in my second application to the Literature and Environment program at the University of Nevada, Reno. And now, we wait. Which isn’t all that new, I’ve sort of been waiting since June of 2008. I waited to apply, applied in Jan. 2009 and then I got rejected and have waited to apply again. But I think it’s starting to wear on me now.

The wear isn’t really from a need to necessarily get in (though, that’s what we’re aiming for here!). The wear has been the waiting to know what I can give myself to next. I’ve spent a year and half in a sort of limbo and I’m ready to get out.

In the improve game, I was “doing ministry with kids and families” and I called FREEZE on myself ... and the crowd (the world, the Man, me, whoever) is still talking over what my next role will be. Somebody needs to call something out and say “Go!”

And I’ll be that embarrassing blade of grass, I really don’t care. I just want to be.

On a practical note, I think I’ll know something within the month. Then I can break a leg.