Day 76: Hitting a wall.

Second play-free day this week, but it turned out to be a rather heavy downer. I had hoped to run some work on my pieces for the Shakespeare certificate and got as far as enlisting my usual friend as audience and critic before realising that just looking at the page of lines made me freeze up and feel completely incapable of saying a word. I had truly hit a block and as I write this it's 2 days later, and I still haven't managed to run the scene or the sonnet out loud other than to myself while out walking. I have the image inside of what I want each one to look like - several, actually. But when it comes to actually doing it, I'm clamming up even more than I was in the EAS audition. I could partly blame the work avoidance on that same mid-time lull I had in prepping for the audition, since I'm familiar with the pieces and it's still 6 weeks until the exam, but I think there's more at work here. I've realised how important this year is for me. This particular speech may only ever get me that Bronze certificate and then never be brought out again, but this exam is one of a few definite landmarks I have hopes of hitting over the coming year and it's the first contact with RADA which already feels like a huge hurdle in my mind. The whole point of signing up was to get an opportunity to see the place, and have a first audience there with lower stakes than the audition I hope I'll be doing next winter. The mental gremlins being what they are, I'm left equal parts terrified of falling on my face and terrified of actually rocking it. If I fail, I've got to come back from that - good practice for handling the inevitable handful of rejections when I go for the full auditions, but I have a feeling it'll be more tempting than ever to just quit, or at least fall back into a holding pattern for a while. And if I come through with flying colours then.. what then? I get cocky, or I decide it was a fluke, or.. I'm overthinking it. I know I am, but it's a bit intimidating to realise I might actually make it this time. I was already telling myself that there's no alternative, no going back, and that I am going to get in somewhere next year, and here's what I have to do to get there - but it's been a very very long time since I last actually got something I went for with this kind of tenacity. I'm used to it all falling apart, and I'm terrified of self-sabotage. There's a photo I've seen around the web of a swing that basically hangs over a cliff, with no harnesses or anything - it looks like the view would be amazing, the high would be like nothing in the world... but I wouldn't trust myself not to let go at the highest point of the swing, by accident, and fall to my death. And the feeling I get looking at that picture, the ambivalence... is pretty similar to thinking about my longer term goals. It's beautiful and a rush, and dizzying and terrifying, and the further along I get and the more elements I add to my preparation, the further and harder I'll fall if I let go. And trusting myself not to let go is turning out to be pretty hard.