shaking it off

Part of being an actor is being able to shake things off -- rejection (primarily), bad rehearsals, an evil auditor, the last character choice you just made -- you name it, we either have to fight through it or shake it off to deliver our best performances. Because the more we hold onto stuff that has nothing to do with the scene at hand, the more that scene veers off track. Sometimes holding onto stuff can be useful and informative, but most of the time I've found it's just dragging shit into the scene that doesn't belong there.

I had an experience the other night in life, not onstage, where I actually shook off my own emotions and it was so astoundingly eye-opening, that I can't believe I didn't think of it earlier.
I periodically get myself into an emotional place where I feel like a little girl -- I feel like crying and hiding and retreating to where someone else will take care of me. This can be caused by any number of things (as many of my friends can attest to) -- a bad day, too much rain (GAH!), hitting the subway just as my train is pulling out... I'm not picky about what upsets me. When I get in this mode, I usually end up stuck in it for a while, sometimes a minute, sometimes an hour, sometimes a day. If I get upset enough to cry, I'll come out the other side of it a little more quickly, but more dramatically, which is fine when I'm alone, but tricky when there are other people around.

Anyway, the particular day in question, I was beating myself up about mistakes I've made in the past, and got stuck in the mode (near someone else who I wasn't sure would completely understand). And I got up, walked around, shook out my body and pretended like that was just a scene I was rehearsing that didn't go the way I wanted it to.

And it was amazing! The feelings didn't go away completely -- I mean, I wasn't acting them in the first place, I was living them. But I actually shook myself out of the mode, which freed me up to look at the situation on its own merits.

It doesn't sound like much, but if you know me (and you know the mode), you know how much of a triumph this was.