This is embarrassing to admit

Oh, hi friends!

Fall theater season is upon us, so I’ve been reading a lot of Playbills and story blurbs and author bios.

And I find myself getting increasingly…anxious?

So-and-so is a Fancy Fellow at a Prestigious Place. She emerged from her mother's womb and was delivered straight into an Emerging Writers' Group. She is an Empress Grace winner, an Aren’t Stray Cats Cute winner, a Potato Head finalist. The writer wakes up every morning with the Future of American Theater and All Culture coursing through her veins. Her HBO show is in its 19th and final season, but don’t worry, her $300 million Netflix deal starts tomorrow. She is a graduate of Juilliard, Yale, and Oxbridge. She’s 22.

Now, here’s the funny thing. I know how to read between the lines. I know that winning awards and going to grad school and being ferried away on a residency on a farm upstate takes time, effort, and rewriting an artistic statement so many times you forget why you're making art in the first place.

Yet that doesn’t stop me from going, Wow, am I behind? I am behind.

The other funny thing. I know that all paths are not the same, and I can also be happy for everyone else’s success. And I usually am!

But I’ve also noticed that these anxious feelings rarely come up when I’m in the middle of doing the work. Never during writing, never during rehearsal, never during editing, never during collaborating.

Because when you’re neck-deep in the work you can only see what’s in front of you. And it doesn’t look like her bio, and it doesn’t look like his New York Times profile.

It looks like you, and the work. It looks like your path. It is your path.

And that, in the moment, is always enough.

If I read Liz Gilbert’s short 10-step caption about writing 15 years ago, I could have saved myself from reading those two dozen books about writing! Oh well! Today, my favorite bit of her advice is step 10.

"Be willing to let it be easy. You might be surprised."

Suggest you listen to this new one “Back to Me” from Grace Potter (feat. Lucius) cranked up in your ears. (Here 'tis on Spotify, too.)

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Thanks, as always, for reading.

Love, Kara