Why It Is Important

I am failing at being articulate today so I am posting the mostly unexpanded / edited thoughts I had last night, in response to my improv instructor's comments about not 'doing it for Harold night/quitting if you don't get on a team'.

I do it because of it, not for it. This is the first time in my life I have worked this hard at something i am not good pretty quickly. I have that kind of personality, as much as I try to fight it. I am lazy and I like to be successful and have people notice how successful I am. Improv is... the sustained 'want' of it is so visible and apparent -- a want that is visible not only to one other person, the way a confessed crush would be, or perhaps to an additional handful of friends, but rather apparent to EVERYONE in the community whose opinion and talent AND friendship you value. To put this into some kind of perspective, I don't open myself up to that kind of inspection and subsequent rejection in ANY other part of my life. In fact, I assiduously avoid it, to the point where I don't even tell people I have crushes on them until 2 years after they've moved to another state.

That's a little bit why it makes us so crazy. The want is deep and fresh and apparent... and it makes it harder to pull any positive emotion out over that scorned hurt. And at the end of the day... I understand people not being able to deal with that, and just leaving over the pain of it. I get it. If you love the game/girl/boy/artform, and the game/girl/boy/artform keeps rejecting you... man it's hard to keep at it.

I should add that you should not stalk people. Not even two years later when they've moved to a different state.

In 'conclusion', if I am not on a team in X number of years... which is likely given the breadth and depth of talent in NYC improv right now... I will stop trying, eventually. I assume. I don't know. I don't want to stop trying... but I can imagine a situation where quitting trying is the best thing to do for me. Anyway. Read above note on articulation ability today.